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Memories of Underdevelopment after Area Studies Harry Harootunian positions: east asia cultures critique, Volume 20, Number 1, Winter 2012, pp. 7-35 (Article) Published by Duke University Press For additional information about this article /journals/pos/summary/v020/20.1.harootunian.html Access provided by Chicago Library (3 Feb 2014 19:12 GMT) “Memories of Underdevelopment” after Area Studies Harry Harootunian The Desire Called Area Studies 1 In this essay, I examine how the “desire” called “area studies” was founded on the privilege attached to xed spatial containers, such as geographic area, culture region, or directional locality (East Asia, Southeast Asia, North- east Asia). The model for these spatial regularities has undoubtedly been the nation-state — itself a spatial gure — and its capacity for moderniz- ing makeovers. These have led to the formation of rationalities such as the liberal-democratic state, capital accumulation, and the primacy of the “self- regulating market,” which have come to collectively signify an unchanging modern structure. Even the transmutation of area studies into its most recent avatar — identity studies, which presumes permanent ethnocultural determinations — persists in privileging the spatial over the force and forms of time. This “end of tem- positions 20:1 doi 10.1215 1471363 Copyright 2012 by Duke University