South East Asia Research, 12, 3, pp. 337–377 The tapestry of language and theory Reading Rosalind Morris on post-structuralism and Thai modernity Peter A. Jackson Abstract: Since the collapse of Marxism as the dominant tradi- tion of radical critique in the 1980s, varieties of post-structuralism have emerged as the most influential form of critical analysis in Thai studies, both in Thailand and the West. However, like previous generations of Marxist-inspired analysts, contemporary post-struc- turalists need to address epistemological questions about the validity of using theory derived from the Western cultural and intellectual tradition in studying a South East Asian society. Issues regarding the translation, transculturation and localization of theory are just as important for twenty-first-century post-structuralist Thai stud- ies as they were for twentieth-century Marxist Thai studies. This study is a critical review of Rosalind Morris’s post-structuralist analyses of modern Thai culture. Through an assessment of the work of a prominent advocate of post-structuralist approaches to inter- preting modern Thai culture, it highlights the interrelationship between the practice of translation between languages/discourses, on the one hand, and the epistemological status of Western theory in Thai studies, on the other. Keywords: post-structuralist theory; modernity; translation; Thai studies Translating Western critical theory in Thai studies Through the middle and later decades of the twentieth century, Marxist analysis had a powerful hold on critical thought in Thailand and anglophone Thai studies. In their respective studies of the history of Thai Marxist thought, Craig Reynolds, Hong Lysa and Kasian Tejapira highlight the centrality of translation, both linguistic and theoretical, to the local reception of Western theory. In answering the question of what Marxism meant in Thailand, Reynolds and Hong observe,