The dilemmas of Asia-as-Method: should the hermeneutical underdogs in Asia do Asia-as-Method?

Abstract This paper brings Kuan-Hsing Chen’s Asia as Method (2010) into conversation with Western feminist social epistemologists, namely Miranda Fricker and Kristie Dotson. It facilitates intercultural dialogue between what I call the “hermeneutical underdogs” of the East and West – those whose historical, material, and/or social marginalization has led to testimonial and hermeneutical injustice despite their epistemically promising vantage point. This dialogue pursues three aims. First, the paper explains Chen’s Asia as Method in the lexicon of epistemic injustice, rendering his claims more legible to Western audiences, whom Chen tasks with “deimperialization.” Second, I demonstrate that Chen’s empirically grounded account of Asia’s hermeneutical marginalization meaningfully challenges Fricker’s causal explanation for hermeneutical injustice, calling for revision of her supposedly universal account. Third, I position Asia-as-Method as an ameliorative strategy addressing both hermeneutical and contributory injustice by enriching epistemic resources within Asia and laying the groundwork for inter-structural epistemic traversing. This intercultural dialogue lays the groundwork for the final part of the paper, which explores the dilemma of “hermeneutical borrowing from the hermeneutical underdogs of the West.” Concepts originating from Western minorities are often epistemically fruitful for understanding Asian minority experiences, yet such hermeneutical reliance appears morally fraught because it perpetuates Asia’s hermeneutical marginalization. In such cases, should hermeneutical underdogs of the East stop learning from their Western counterparts? The paper leaves this dilemma open and invites reflection on the ethics of hermeneutical solidarity between marginalized communities in the East and the West.