Fifteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

Colonialism, imperialism, and western hegemony have altered the seams which integrally bind the modern nation-state. Through economic and conventional warfare, histories, heritage, and intergenerational memories are shaped and shifted by the multitude of oppressing powers. We seek to analyze this phenomenon in South East Asia through three stages of power operationalized within these societies. The first being the colonial transfer of epistemic violence onto the colonized, imparting through physical and psychological means a new paradigm of human supremacy over other beings and the natural environment. Second, the resulting decontextualization of violence through decolonization and the resulting inter- and intra-state conflict. Third, the movement into the modern capitalist order, where the past is used to justify a modern capitalist coloniality, re-writing through globalization, the heritage of the world’s populations into a pro-expansion, pro-exploitation narrative. The charting of this arc begins to allow justice to be approached through radical subjectivity, bringing heritage to intersectionality.