Turning the Tables: Derrida, China, and the Asia Turn

After a discussion of how Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology and Specters of Marx illustrate two inverse ways in which the figure of China has been marginalized within Western critical theory, this essay considers a contemporary counter-discourse developed by Asia-based theorists who use an approach dubbed “China/Asia as method” to critique the universalizing assumptions found in Western theory. Beginning with Takeuchi Yoshimi’s 1960 article “Asia as Method,” I suggest that this approach effectively turns the tables not only on a Eurocentric intellectual tradition itself, but also on concomitant attempts to use China/Asia as a space of radical alterity from which to critique the presumptive universality of Eurocentric discourses. I consider two recent analyses that draw (either explicitly or implicitly) on the “China/Asia as method” approach and apply it to contemporary debates over LGBTQ rights in Sinophone East Asia. Finally, I use a set of spectral resonances in the two Asian LGBTQ case studies to return to Derrida’s allusions to China and “table-turning” séances, but with a twist.