Is there a Sovietology of South-East Asian studies?

This article provides an indictment of the study of South-East Asian intern ational relations by confronting head-on the problems that have arisen with in this field, in particular the way in which Western academics ended up co lluding with deeply illiberal regimes in the area, which excluded dissentin g opinions, often by deliberately denouncing these opinions as 'polemical'. This study uses the discipline of Sovietology to explore the reasons why S outh-East Asian studies developed into a closed community of scholarship, o ften hostile to dissenting viewpoints. The disciplines bear comparison beca use they both manifestly failed to predict the cataclysms that befell their respective areas of study. The analysis identifies similarities in the way in which the two disciplines seemed to ignore sceptical voices and evolved a shared belief in 'system stability'. As a result, both Soviet studies an d the study of South-East Asian international relations developed serious m ethodological flaws. However, this study argues that South-East Asian studi es suffered even more severe disciplinary shortcomings than its Sovieto-log ical counterpart because the academic space was further de-intellectualized by the pervasive influence of the authoritarian South-East Asian developme ntal state which blurred the distinction between scholarship and bureaucrac y and which succeeded in co-opting Western academics. The result was to cre ate a field of study that promulgated the tyranny of the single truth, whic h erroneously perceived South-East Asia as a region of domestic tranquillit y and regional order. What, in fact, emerged was an intellectual culture of self-censorship that kept South-East Asian studies within tacit, self-regu lated boundaries.