The Making of a ‘Classic’ in South East Asian Studies

Abstract

What makes a ‘classic’ in South East Asian studies? In addressing this question, the paper compares and contrasts the features of two books written in the late 1940s and early 1950s: Teodoro Agoncillo's The Revolt of the Masses and George Kahin's Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia. It examines the subject position of the authors and the politico-academic contexts in which their works were written, assessed and consumed. Specifically, the paper explores the following questions. To what extent did scholarly merit define a ‘classic’? What features internal to particular area studies stimulated or impeded the making of a potential classic? What sort of political and academic architectures were conducive or unreceptive to potential candidates? In what ways, and to what extent, have the ‘rules of the game’ changed 60 years later?