My decolonial journey: Using Asia as method to de-link from coloniality/modernity

My study aims to identify and examine how the logic of coloniality/modernity under the name of globalization impacts Asian subjectivity by theorizing gendered and racialized lived experiences in the transnational context. To do this, my research approaches Asia as method as a methodological direction and autoethnography as a method in order to extend the limits of postcolonial studies. Although Asia as method, as a postcolonial and decolonial strategy, does not include race and gender perspectives, it reveals colonial symptoms in line with coloniality/modernity from broader geopolitical locations. Drawing on such methodological lens and body of transnational feminists’ literature, my study asks following research questions: 1) How can my narrative experiences as a gendered and raced Asian woman in a transnational context make visible the logic of coloniality? 2) How does the logic of coloniality in the pursuit of a PhD in America shape my decolonial epistemological journey? The study discloses how educational migration is entangled with histories of the U.S. imperialism and militarism which shapes experiences in terms of race and gender from both an overlooked geopolitical context and the U.S. context. Also, this study can make a contribution to international/global curriculum studies usually framed as a marketized and standardized project for the service of neoliberalism. By foregrounding the lived experiences of a transnational and decolonial journey, I underscore the importance what curriculum scholar, Ted Aoki calls, “curriculum-as-lived” to advance a more justice-oriented framework for international students and scholars.