Moving Beyond Thai-Centrism: Theorizing “Asia as Method” in Decolonial Education

Abstract

Grounded in Chen’s idea, Asia as method, the author conceptualizes his theorizing with Winichakul’s signified meaning of Asia as a home for understanding how the author encounters educational phenomenon and having the authority to reconstitute Thai-centrism discourse in education. The notion of “home” signifies Thailand is part of Asia, which is used to move beyond the debate over “us vs. them”, which is non-productive and leads to other shortcomings. Asia as method as a frame of reference can be used to conceptualize how knowledge, culture, power, and discourse intersect in education. Given that the field of education is a cultural praxis in which diverse discourses, positionalities, and pedagogies deserve its place, education needs to be reconceptualized by moving beyond the legacy of western modernity-coloniality episteme and any forms of epistemic internal colonization, a legacy that continues to occur at the deep-rooted socio-cultural and psychological level and plays essential roles in constructing our subjectivity about educational ideals for cognitive and social justice. Thus, to move forward with decolonial and critical education projects, it is essential to explore multi-epistemology and methodology for nuanced understandings of education in the socio-cultural, political, historical, and environmental contexts. The relationship between Asia as method and decolonial and critical education projects need to be a point of departure for democratic deliberations against epistemicide and demonstration of how education as a form of cultural praxis works to internalize particular knowledge production for constructing a specific notion of citizenship in Thailand, Southeast Asia and beyond.