Precarious Belongings

Review

Relationships between affect and national identity are a crucial aspect of the critical perspectivism ushered in by contemporaneity. This book is an important contribution to knowledge of those relationships in Asian contexts. (Paul Gladston, Professor of Contemporary Visual Cultures and Critical Theory, University of Nottingham)

Given the contemporary recrudescence of nationalism in varied forms across Europe, Asia, and North America, this publication is a timely one, providing significant insights from a wide variety of Asian perspectives. (Christopher Connery, Professor, World Literature and Cultural Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz)

Asian nationalisms have often been discussed as state ideologies. The present volume rather discusses Asian nations as communal identities constituted by affects. Its demonstration of the seamless interweaving of love and hate in the operation of Asian nations is both fascinating and disturbing. (Kristen Nordhaug, Professor of Development Studies, Oslo and Akershus University College)

This illuminating collection offers grounded studies of experiences shaped by various nationalist moods being mobilised across Asia. It is also a riveting read for anyone anywhere concerned by the new forms of populism, civic disenchantment, ‘hate-loving’ speech, and digital militancy erupting now world-wide. Posing the question of conviviality in an age of precarity, this book helps us all to think. (Meaghan Morris, Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney)

In the midst of refugee crises, terrorist attacks and territorial disputes across the globe, nationalism remains a powerful force in generating affects of inclusion and exclusion. In Asia, inter-Asian migration, enabled and disrupted by a history of colonialism, capitalist globalization and political conflicts, has rendered the idea of nation as both politically distinct and culturally malleable.

Precarious Belongings: Affect and Nationalism in Asia explores the affective politics of Asian nationalism by addressing the entwined structures of precarious belonging and national feelings. Bringing together leading scholars it looks at how the reification of nationalism in social movements, popular sentiments, online groups, and cultural representation directs hatred towards migrant and minority groups across Asia. The book posits that nationalist affects are embedded in the politics of exclusion, and seeks to make room for precarious belongings in the transnational and multicultural present. It should be of interest to students and scholars interested in Asian Cultural Studies, transnationalism, migration and nationalism.