For a love of ‘the Thais’: US imperialism and the tender violence of Thai studies

Abstract

Since the inception of Thai studies, scholars have been preoccupied with the construction of a moral stance in the service of power. Intimate knowledge of the Thai interior and the ability to speak for the Thai ‘native’ has unwittingly supported intervention disguised as a warm embrace. Recent studies have shown how this sentimental mode of engagement was central to enabling US expansion during the early Cold War. Area Studies specialists who travelled to Thailand did so as part of this same cultural milieu. Adopting the ‘village’ as the backdrop, their efforts to represent the Thai villager committed what Laura Wexler has described as a tender violence: restoring the native as a legitimate subject by collapsing the multitude of complex voices, experiences and priorities into a bound set of useful observations. The result was the replacement of colonial markers of difference with new and acceptable ones. It was a process that proved vital to an imperial expansion, led by the United States, but enthusiastically supported and ultimately shaped by the Thai elite.

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