ABSTRACT
This chapter offers arguments and explains how K.H. Chen's ideas have been deployed to address the East-West dichotomy in two projects, with different emphases on the tensions of English-Vietnamese languages and East-West values. It explores some of the central concepts such as deimperialization, geo-colonial historical materialism, subjectivity, translation, base-entity and cultural imaginary. Before reading Chen's book Asia as Method, the backgrounds of the authors as English-language teacher trainers and novice researchers had been largely shaped by the East-West dichotomy, deeply entrenched in their educational experiences as well as lived cultures. The chapter presents two case studies, which illuminate how Asia as Method has been articulated in the field of English-language education. Any conclusion drawn from the two case studies so far is, and should be, subject to changes, debates and contestations across time and space, as Chen's notion of geo-colonial historical materialism and critical syncretism underlines.
