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The End of Pax Americana

The End of Pax Americana

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In The End of Pax Americana, Naoki Sakai focuses on U.S. hegemony's long history in East Asia and the effects of its decline on contemporary conceptions of internationality. Engaging with themes of nationality in conjunction with internationality, the civilizational construction of differences between East and West, and empire and decolonization, Sakai focuses on the formation of a nationalism of hikikomori, or “reclusive withdrawal”—Japan’s increasingly inward-looking tendency since the late 1990s, named for the phenomenon of the nation’s young people sequestering themselves from public life. Sakai argues that the exhaustion of Pax Americana and the post–World War II international order—under which Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and China experienced rapid modernization through consumer capitalism and a media revolution—signals neither the “decline of the West” nor the rise of the East, but, rather a dislocation and decentering of European and North American political, economic, diplomatic, and intellectual influence. This decentering is symbolized by the sense of the loss of old colonial empires such as those of Japan, Britain, and the United States. Naoki Sakai examines the decline of US hegemony in Japan and East Asia and its impact on national identity and legacies of imperialism. Naoki Sakai is Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences in Asian Studies Emeritus at Cornell University and the author of many books, including Voices of the Past: The Status of Language in Eighteenth-Century Japanese Discourse and Translation and Subjectivity: On Japan and Cultural Nationalism. Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction  1
1. History and Responsibility: Debates over The Showa History  37
2. From Relational Identity to Specific Identity: On Equality and Nationality  57
3. Asian Theory and European Humanity: On the Question of Anthropological Difference  91
4. "You Asians": On the Historical Role of the Binary of the West and Asia  129
5. Addressing the Multitude of Foreigners, Echoing Foucault / Naoki Sakai and John Solomon  159
6. The Loss of Empire and Inward-Looking Society  183
Part 1: Area Studies and Transpacific Complicity  183
Part 2: Empire Under Subcontract  197
Part 3: Inward-Looking Society  247
Conclusion: Shame and Decolonization  269
Appendix 1. Memorandum on Policy towards Japan / Edwin O. Reischauer  287
Appendix 2. Statement on Racism Prepared by William Haver and Naoki Sakai, March 20, 1987, in Chicago / William Haver and Naoki Sakai  291
Notes  295
References  329
Index  341

“This is a masterful and brilliant account of the rise and fall of the Pax Americana from the perspective of Japan and northeast Asia. Working through and beyond the pitfalls and shortcomings of area studies, Naoki Sakai opens new and often unexpected angles on racism, nationalism, and the nation form in a time of transition. There is much to learn from this book, on Japan and northeast Asia, but more generally on the world we live in.”
“Ranging widely across texts, languages, times (conventionally understood as the premodern and the modern), and places (typically called ‘Asia’ and ‘the West’), these essays interrogate the bordering practices of knowledge production about areas while demonstrating how rethinking modernity through Japan may enable ethically engaged and concretely situated critiques of nationalism, imperialism, racism, sexism, violence, humanism, and more across the globe. A singular and timely achievement from one of our most learned, theoretically rigorous, and profound thinkers.”

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Weight 1 oz
Dimensions 1 × 6 × 9 in