Preamble
Asians think nationally , regionally, and internationally but not continentally, at least not yet, since there is a marked absence of a poly-Asian continental consciousness that unites the continent along a shared agenda. This is especially the case once we use the prism of Asian cinema as the medium of examination. While the term Asian cinema is used as an umbrella framework to cover any single national cinema as well as all national cinemas arising from within the Asian continent , the term Asian cinema itself is not synonymous with a continent embracing poly-Asian collective filmmaking praxis . The absence of an expansive and inclusive continental sense of a poly-Asian cinema is a result of the fact that there is a historical gap in the creation of a poly-Asian cinematic consciousness unifying national Asian filmmakers to work collectively to forward a shared aesthetic, ideological, and economic framework whereby they will individually address the greater Asian continental condition with one big collective poly-Asian voice .
The absence of a poly-Asian continental cinematic consciousness stands out once we consider the existence of continental cinemas outside of Asia. This list includes European art cinema , New Latin American Cinema, and Pan-African cinema , which all exist as a strategic response to counter the dominance of North America ’s commercially driven Hollywood . For all three continental cinematic examples, there is an historical moment when, for a time, a group of disparate national film directors from the same continent committed themselves to creating individual films that together shared an aesthetic, ideological, and economic affiliation through a common manifesto of continental group solidarity and mutual support. Oftentimes, it took a continental film festival serving as the locus of convergence for like-minded cineastes to meet, discuss, and agree to form and sustain a continental film movement. Strangely, the Asian continent has not had a similar cinematic collective declaration of principles nor had a catalytic constellation of film festivals serving as its salon for such a serious singular scenario.
The Desire for a Poly-Asian Continental Film Movement
By invoking the birth of a poly-Asian continental cinema , I propose to shift away from nation-centric and region-centric views of the Asian continent and its rich cinematic traditions. In their place, I wish to focus rather on how individual Asian nations can better engage with each other to create an enlarged poly-Asian continental consciousness where boundaries of exclusionary division are replaced with narrative pathways of inclusive union. At face value, this stands as a utopian aspiration given that Asian ethnonationalism based on descent rather than consent following the “one shared bloodline ” ideology, an obligation to keep that bloodline “pure,” and its corresponding myth of ethnogenesis are still proclaimed in national histories to create an unbroken teleology of ethnonational legitimization that can span back as far as 5000 years into the distant past. Consequently, individual Asians know how to be Asian nationalists and perhaps even Asian regionalists but becoming Asian continentalists is largely absent in our imaginings.
A process of political decolonization marks the post-World War II era with ethnonationalism standing as the driving force in forming the current alignment of independent nation-states that Benedict Anderson terms “imagined communities ” (1991). The immediate objective was to assert the national by defining its distinctiveness as well as its direct reconnectedness to its ethnomythical past despite the colonial disruption by expansionist European, American, and Japanese imperial powers. The end result is that when we pose the rhetorical question of, “When were Asians truly Asian in the collective continental sense?” the reply is one of, “Never.” This does not automatically mean that individual Asian nations were never or are not Asian but instead are limited in scale and scope based on national rather than continental boundaries. So the big issue is, “How can national Asians become more continental Asians such that poly-Asianness becomes more of the quotidian norm?”
Within academia, the great challenge is to shift away from the safe, predictable, and limiting practice of becoming a “native informant with a PhD ” if you are Asian or an Orientalizing gweilo (Cantonese for foreigner that is sometimes used in a derogatory manner but not so in this case) if one is not Asian by expanding our collective repertoire to include other parts of Asia outside of our nation of origin or specialization to become continental Asianists. However, the nature of academia, especially in the arts and humanities, requires us to first focus on mastering prepotent discourses, methodologies, philosophies, theories, and traditions that connect us with North American and Western European modes of intellectual dominance. Therefore, when we do engage in a comparative approach, an extra-Asian national perspective is neither automatic nor the top priority. Of course, there are individual scholars who have undertaken a more bi-Asian, tri-Asian, or multi-Asian pathway with additional scholars embarking annually on this greater mission. Yet as dedicated as we may aspire to become truly poly-Asian, in the complete all-inclusive continental sense it is a Herculean undertaking to contemplate let alone master. Nevertheless, it is a worthy endeavor because of the magnificence of the project and also because it has yet to be completed. To do this, we need to depend on each other in joint ventures such as this anthology to learn from each other’s insights and thereby gain a clearer and faster route to creating an expanded poly-Asian dimension to augment our own individual repertoire of one, two, three, or more Asian national contexts.
Historical Impediments for a Unified Continental Asia
Defining Asia as a continent is not easy to do since many competing definitions exist. For example, as Leo Ching reflects,
Asia is neither a cultural, religious or linguistic unity, nor a unified world. The principle of its identity lies outside of itself, in relation to (an) Other. If one can ascribe to Asia any vague sense of unity, it is that which is excluded and objectified by the West in the service of its historical progress. Asia is, and can be one, only under the imperial eyes of the West. (1998, 70)
Ching’s position is largely correct since Asia is positioned historically from a Eurocentric perspective originating from ancient Greece , which defined the geographical expanse to its East as “Asia.” Prasenjit Duara reminds us that, “After all, Asia was merely the name of the area east of the Greek ecumene in ancient times” (2010, 963). However, those same ancient Greeks never imagined that their Asia, largely defined as modern-day Turkey and perhaps the Middle East , would go so far East as to meet the Pacific Ocean . More importantly, Ching denies Asians agency to define our Asia as empowered subjects in our own right. Accepting Ching’s position is to declare defeat before the fight has even begun.
One key issue with the near impossibility of an all-inclusive continental poly-Asianness is that there has never been a historical precedent outside of a cartographical designation of a single, monolithic “Asia.” Even wondering if individual Asians could imagine ourselves connected to each other as fellow continental Asianists becomes a strange proposition, let alone answerable in the positive. Be that as it may, unification via military conquest almost happened but the continent is disjointed religiously, culturally, linguistically, and ethnically. These factors come into play to present the continent of Asia as possibly “one” but one that never achieved “oneness.” Duara highlights,
While there is a long-standing and still burgeoning historiography of Asian connections through the study of the precolonial and early modern maritime trade, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are generally not seen as a time of growing Asian connections. (2010, 963)
Despite the lack of a clear historical precedent to replicate, I propose as a starting point establishing poly-Asia as a continental Asian entity that includes East Asia , Inner Asia , Southeast Asia , South Asia , and Central Asia as well as the Middle East and Oceania .
Via military conquest, the Mongol Empire (1206–1368), first under the leadership of Genghis Khan (1162–1227) and then later under Kubl...