Theory, Asia and the Sinophone

This article examines the politics of the majoritarian binary, ‘The West and the Rest’, and more specifically, ‘Western Theory, Asian Reality’, as a politics of power that serves specific interests ranging from imperialism and nationalism to the suppression of heterogeneity in languages, ethnicities, and cultures. The Sinophone is posited here as a presence, literary and otherwise, that interrupts this majoritarian binary by challenging the chain of equivalence among ethnicity, language, and nationality.