Pheng Cheah

Pheng Cheah

Type
Assistant Professor Fellow
Department
Rhetoric
2000-01

Professor Pheng Cheah intends in his book project, "Spectral Nationality: The Idea of Freedom in Modern Philosophy and the Experience of Freedom in Postcoloniality," to examine ideas of culture and freedom in eighteenth and nineteenth century philosophy and their relation to Third World decolonizing nationalisms and postcolonial projects of emancipation in contemporary globalization. This is to trace the genesis of the conception of Third World revolutionary culture from the modern philosopheme of culture as freedom found in German idealism (Kant, Fichte and Hegel) and Marxist materialism; and, further, to explore how the vicissitudes of contemporary literary projects of postcolonial nationalist Bildung in neocolonial globalization lead us to question this very concept of culture inherited from philosophical modernity. Professor holds the Ph.D. in English from Cornell and an LL.B from the University of Sydney, Australia. He was a member of the Department of English at Northwestern University before joining Berkeley Department of Rhetoric in 1999.