Overcoming marginality: the decolonizing force of Zo studies

This article argues that we must pay attention to how local scholarship focusing on the borderlands of Southeast Asia is decolonizing Southeast Asian studies. The field of ‘Zo studies’ presents an example. It is unusual because local scholars take the lead, unlike in Southeast Asian studies as a whole, where Euro-American knowledge production has been, and continues to be, privileged and prominent. The Zo lands straddle the borders of Myanmar, India, and Bangladesh – long closed to outside researchers – and Zo scholars increasingly seek to dismantle the still largely intact ‘ethno-architecture of imperialism’ that underpins contemporary power relations – marginalizing and obfuscating borderland societies in Southeast Asia. Decolonizing this field requires critiquing not only the ‘colonial gaze,’ but also the ‘postcolonial gaze’ embedded in methodological nationalism and methodological area-ism. Zo studies represent a vernacular trajectory of intellectual decolonization that offers a model to other sub-fields of Southeast Asian studies.