After the Fall: A Response to Dirlik and Jun

Abstract

The cultural politics of the East Asian miracle helped to legitimize the lean and mean economism of Western neoliberalism, which in turn became the dominant ideology of post-Cold War globalism. With special reference to the recent work of Arif Dirlik, and a related article by Sang-In Jun, this essay explores the less miraculous elements of East Asian development. These elements went public after the fall" — i.e., after the 1997 Crash. Until then the myth of Asian values had afforded an effective diversion from political repression and ecological carnage. A negative symbiosis had developed between Western globalism and these tendentious values. Only after the fall did globalists rush to distinguish Asian crony capitalism from the no-less-undemocratic practices that could justly be labeled crony globalism. Clearly the neoliberal/Asian values alliance —a crucial pillar of the so-called New World Order —has been damaged. Dirlik and Jun weaken it further by exploding the claim of top-down Asian values to represent anything other than present power structures. In line with Amartya Sens Asian strategy, and my own adumbration of a Korean model as opposed to Singapore-style autocracy, Dirlik invokes the developmental alternative of bottom-up Asian values. These, I suggest, offer a potential corrective for the current privileging of economic over political development.