Decolonialising Southeast Asian Nationalism

Decolonialising involves deep and challenging engagement with the imperial trappings of the Western canon, in which many academics and students in both (previously) colonising and colonised countries have been and continue to be educated. It entails questioning what makes canonical knowledge legitimate, the erasures and inequalities bound up with it and the structural racism that perpetuates it. Decolonial approaches seek to incorporate different perspectives and make space for equal dialogue between them, highlighting the contribution of racialised and other minorities in creating the condition of global modernity. This is particularly applicable to the critical study of nationalist ideology and can also be linked to critiques of the conceptualisation of Southeast Asia itself as an artefact of area studies. The three parts of this chapter, devoted to theory, methodology and pedagogy, respectively, consider each of these aspects of decoloniality in relation to the study of Southeast Asian nationalism.