Especially since the 1930s, ＂East Asia＂ as a spatial imaginary has been increasingly deployed by Imperial Japan and the U.S. to institute a larval network of nation-forms that locally mediate and effectuate biopowers. For critical intellectuals today, a critical exodus out of an ＂East Asia＂ as an imperial network of nation-states is not only necessary; it has to propose an alternative process in politics and arts whereby categories of nationality, culture, and colonial difference are at once deconstructed and overcome. This essay first situates the genealogical origin of the term ＂East Asia＂ in Japanese imperialism in the 1930s and then considers two theoretical efforts to critique metaphysical assumptions about culture that legitimate such imperial ideology: Martin Heidegger's ＂The Age of the World Picture＂ and Rey Chow's The Age of the World Target. If both Heidegger and Chow underscore the importance of ＂theory＂ as a practice in which currently foreclosed modes of life can be ＂thought,＂ they also shed a critical light upon a symptomatic return to a non-theoretical culturalism in East Asia today - most notably exemplified by the term ＂Asia as method＂ - whereby anticolonial political desires remain firmly tethered to the imperial scheme of culture. In light of Heidegger's exploration of ＂invisible shadows＂ and ＂secret emitting of light＂ that haunt ＂the world as picture,＂ cinema emerges as a productive site in which conceptualizations of ＂East Asia＂ as a metaphysical＂picture＂ or ＂target＂ can be undone. The essay looks at two films, Suwa Nobuhiro's H Story (2001) and Lee Changdon's Secret Sunshine (2007), in which historical secrets re-emerge as the instances of newness in the present and release their witnesses from the schema of cultural nationalisms in Japan and South Korea. The paper concludes by suggesting a potential intersection among Heidegger's reading of Kantian ＂schema,＂ Naoki Sakai's critique of a ＂schema＂ of co-figurative nations, and Gilles Deleuze's notion of ＂humor＂ as a ＂fold＂ that critically traverses the schematized world.
自1930年代開始，「東亞」做為一種空間想像，長期以來漸漸被日本帝國和美國當作是建置國家基礎網絡的形式，成為實行在地生命掌控的媒介。對於現今的知識份子而言，以一種具批判性的出離「東亞」做為民族國家的帝國網絡，實屬必要；該方法必須尋求另一種政治和藝術的途徑，在此同時，國族、文化和殖民差異的範疇將被解構。本論文首先處理「東亞」一詞於1930年代日本帝國主義的系譜來源，接著思考兩種批判形而上假說的理論如何處理帝國意識形態合理化的文化現象：馬丁．海德格的〈世界影像的時代〉，以及周蕾的《世界標靶的時代》。倘若海德格和周蕾兩人皆強調以「理論」做為一種實踐的重要性，他們也清楚地揭示出一種轉向當今東亞非理論的文化主義徵兆，其中最為顯著的例子即是「亞洲即理論」一詞。在此其中，反殖民的政治欲望仍舊受到帝國文化範疇的束縛。
