positions: asia critique: Reconsidering the 2006 MIT Visualizing Cultures Controversy

This special issue of positions: asia critique takes a look back at the MIT "Visualizing Cultures" controversy of 2006. Rather than frame the controversy as Chinese student censorship of US scholarship, contributors turn their attention to a broad interrogation of wartime imagery and the representation of violence, student activism and image-driven nationalism in cyberspace, digital pedagogy and the impact of the Internet on knowledge production. Essays examine the crisscrossing context of digital content with a critically balanced mindset and question the responsibility of every party (native and expert, academic and the wider public) in an age of digital pedagogy. The goal of this issue is to offer multiple avenues for understanding why the controversy broke out and how it was represented in the public sphere, as well as provide longer and more layered historical contexts for similar conflicts in the future.