Session Abstract

The 1950s constituted a decade of transformation in which decolonization and Cold War geopolitics forged new alliances among people across the colonial and post-colonial world.  Recently, scholars have focused largely on major diplomatic initiatives - namely the 1955 Bandung conference of Afro-Asian nations - in the making of a new world order.  But the 1950s were also a fluid, liminal period in the social and cultural histories of many third world countries, particularly in Southeast Asia, one of the critical ideological battlegrounds of the Cold War. The cultural dimensions of both the Cold War and decolonization in Southeast Asia have received comparatively little attention, and scholars have only recently begun to show how the political dynamics of non-alignment cast complex cultural shadows which have yet to be fully appreciated. As Ingrid Muan and Tony Day have observed, Southeast Asians were by no means willing puppets of major power blocs, but experimented with new ideas and techniques for intellectual and cultural expression to create new visions of the nation.  In Southeast Asia, intellectuals and revolutionaries explored new vectors of solidarity across national, linguistic and ideological borders. They engaged critically with communist, socialist and democratic ideas in circulation, constantly reformulated their political loyalties, and built up networks of intellectual and radical sociability. In many cases, however, these emerging transnational solidarities threatened national enterprises and provoked ultra-nationalist reactions. Over the course of the decade, their proponents were frequently tempted or challenged to express themselves in national terms. This panel examines a range of connections emerging among Southeast Asians over this decade, and the ways in which new visions of the nation were influenced and shaped by these dynamics.