An interview with Leo T. S. Ching: on the politics of sentiment, anti- and pro-Japanism, and the coalitional outlook

Inspired by his Anti-Japan: The Politics of Sentiment in Postcolonial East Asia (2019), this interview with Dr. Leo Ching invites the readers’ critical attention and examination on the temporally and spatially complicated coloniality and decolonial outlook in the Asia-Pacific. The postcolonial and post-Pacific-War sentiments encapsulated by the terms “anti-Japanism” and “pro-Japanism” are the anchor points for the inquiries about each of the East Asian subjects’ geo-historically specific psychological struggles. The interview covers the following aspects: (1) Dr. Ching’s familial experience and social observations that drove his book project; (2) The clarification of “sentiment” as a politically chosen concept that is differentiated from the psychoanalytical “affect” and logically connects with “feeling” and “emotion”; (3) the “trans-imperial” complicity between the imperial superpowers; (4) the search of alternative narratives that challenge the normative, linear, and masculinist narrative on the Japanese colonization in Taiwan; (5) the search of the sentiments that are not (fully) co-opted or regulated by nation-states; (6) Dr. Ching’s reflection on his gendered positionality and how that positionality takes part in his interpretation of the intersectionally oppressed female bodies. The interview concludes with the appeal for the coalitional politics that responds to contemporary racism and colonial residues.

Duke Scholars

Author Leo Ching Asian & Middle Eastern Studies