What are asiascape-goats?

Asia has a long history of being recognized by Western writers as something “alien.” In particular, China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea are frequently referred to out of exploratory spirit, in order to mystify and exoticise the otherwise everyday, or even to mock the apparently strange and unintelligible. Commentators often implicitly or inadvertently exploit this sense of the “alienness” of East Asia in order to criticize their own societies: complaining about the “strange” lack of gender equality in Japan or the “unusual” treatment of human rights in China or animal rights in Korea. In other words, the idea of the “alien” enables Western commentators to deny the problems in their own societies by projecting them onto others, scapegoating East Asia for social, cultural and political woes. And conversely, commentators in East Asia can be prone to do this with stories about Western nations. We call these twin phenomena, asia-scape-goating.
This section will by no means try to abolish “otherness” and “alienations.” On the contrary, it will develop ways to make productive use of this alien or fictional character of the other (be it Asia or the West) as a means for critique with great but yet unknown (or: alien) potentials. By actively deploying Asia as a scapegoat (or exposing how the West can be scapegoated in Asia) this section hopes to contribute to new, provocative, radical, and hopefully productive forms of (self) critique and reflection.