3.29.2006
Imagine Otherwise (Postcolonial Asian American Studies)
Title
Chuh, Kandace. Imagine Otherwise: On Asian Americanist Critique. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.
Field
Postcolonial Asian American Studies
Summary
"Imagine Otherwise undertakes a critical consideration of Asian American studies...I mean to ask after the coherency and object(ive)s of Asian American studies and to understand its work as both an academic field and an explicitly political project." (4) What this entails for Chuh is positing that Asian American studies should be reconsidered in light of Poststructuralist and Postcolonial critique. Further, Asian American studies should be envisioned as a subjectless discourse as the multiplicity of AA is irreducible, so much so that it doesn't make any sense to posit it upon identity, but rather as a theory that undoes and critique dominant US nationalism and Asian Americanist claims to coherence based on positivist notions of race, identity, etc. "Subjectlessness as a discursive ground for Asian American studies can, I think, help to identity and trace the shifting positionalities and complicated terrains of U.S. American culture and politics articulated to a globalized frame, by opening up the field to account for practices of subjectivity that might not be immediately visible." (11) Chuh makes a case for reckoning with intra-Asian American difference and for theory as important in a field that so often bifurcates itself into theory v. practice (with practice taking on the dominat, legitimized space of historical consituent for the field itself) - to do what Chuh suggests neccessitates a materialist engagement with literature that she takes on in her first two chapters. She examines Carlos Bulosan's America is in the Heart and the work of Bienvenido Santos to make her first point - the inability for AA to cope with the difference posed by Filipino American experience "compels us to hold as suspect the promise of justice through the achievement of subjectivity." (32) "'Filipinos' may be understood as a category of critique rather than identity." (56) She looks at texts on Japanese internment to locate a transnationalist critique of AA studies, to see beyond the ways in which AA has used nation as the main vector of understanding racial identity. "These legal and literary narratives compel us to identify the process of the affiliation of meaning to certain bodies as the collectivizing problematic anchoring and necessitating Asian American discourse." (63) "What I am suggesting is that the imperative for Asian Americanists to think in terms of transnationalism arise not only from globalization but also from recognizing the transnational within the national, from understanding that Asiatic racialization traces and materializes the transnational dimensions of U.S. national identity." (70) The next chapter expands on this imperative in its call for AA studies not to reinscribe Orientalist figures of othering on the Asian in Asian American. "What I am suggesting is that critically acknowledging the material effectivity of multiply located histories and chronologies...means recognizing the limitations of knowledge produced by distancing 'America' from 'Asia' as limitations that do ideological work...We might conceive of 'Asian America' as a heterotropic formation, one that enfigures the multiple and dissimilar spaces and places of discourse and history that collectively produce what seems at first glance, terminologically, to refer to a distinctly bounded site, 'America.'" (111) Finally, the last chapter looks at what is at stake in positing Postcolonial studies as important for AA studies. "Postcolonial studies contributes to Asian Americanist discourse by highlighting the ways that national identities come into being through negotiations with global nexuses of relations and power." (117) As such the US needs to be recognized as not just neocolonial, but as part of a history of empire and intra(?)colonization. "I want to suggest that Asian Americanists conceptually disown 'America,' the ideal, to further the work of creating home as a space relieved of states of domination...I am conceived of home as that condition in which there is an equality of ability to participate in negotiating and constructing the ethos of the places in which we live." (124) These Postcolonial critiques are important not only for our understanding of "America," but also for a critical engagement with Asian American studies as a discipline. "Asian American studies stands as a discourse not of 'minorities' but of the 'emergent dominate,' to borrow Gayatri Spivak's phrase (1997), Asian Americanist discourse must look to itself to ensure that the partial and variagated freedoms enjoyed by both Asian American studies and various Asian-raced peoples are not merely celebrated but are leading to an elsewhere." (145)
Keywords
Difference, Asian American studies, Asian Americanist, Poststructuralist, Subjectlessness, Anxiety, Undecidability
Other Thoughts
I have many feelings about the arguments put forth in this book, too many to elaborate here. Ask me about them sometime.
"Far from being a transparent, objective description of a knowable identity, the term [Asian American] may be conceived as a mediating presence that links bodies to the knowledge regimes of the U.S. nation. 'Asian America' is in this sense a metaphor for resistance and racism." (27)
"Recall that identity is a teleological narrative used in a politics of identity, one that posits a common origin and looks toward a common destiny." (33)
"Imagine Otherwise has suggested embracing the a priori meaninglessness of 'Asian American,' the absence of an identity anterior to naming." (149)
"What, finally, I think subjectlessness can help us to do is to articulate Asian American studies as an unbounded field, one that while in the structure of the academic institution is not structured by it." (151)
Other QE Works Cited
Anderson, B. Imagined Communities.(Postcolonial Asian American Studies)
Bhabha, H. Location of Culture (Postcolonial Asian American Studies)
Chatterjee, P. The Nation and its Fragments. (Postcolonial Asian American Studies)
Chuh, K and Shimikawa, K. Orientations (selections) (Postcolonial Asian American Studies)
Foucault, M. History of Sexuality (History and Theory of the Body)
Lowe, L. Immigrant Acts. (Postcolonial Asian American Studies)
Radhakrishnan, R. Diasporic Mediations (Postcolonial Asian American Studies)
Palumbo-Liu, D. Asian/American (Postcolonial Asian American Studies)
Shohat, E. Stam, R. Unthinking Eurocentricism (selections) (Film and Media Studies)
Said, E. Orientalism. (Postcolonial Asian American Studies)
Said, E. Culture and Imperialism (Postcolonial Asian American Studies)
Spivak, G. In Other Worlds (Postcolonial Asian American Studies)
Trinh, T.When the Moon Waxes Red (Postcolonial Asian American Studies)
Wong, S. Denationalization Reconsidered (Postcolonial Asian American Studies)
Chuh, Kandace. Imagine Otherwise: On Asian Americanist Critique. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.
Field
Postcolonial Asian American Studies
Summary
"Imagine Otherwise undertakes a critical consideration of Asian American studies...I mean to ask after the coherency and object(ive)s of Asian American studies and to understand its work as both an academic field and an explicitly political project." (4) What this entails for Chuh is positing that Asian American studies should be reconsidered in light of Poststructuralist and Postcolonial critique. Further, Asian American studies should be envisioned as a subjectless discourse as the multiplicity of AA is irreducible, so much so that it doesn't make any sense to posit it upon identity, but rather as a theory that undoes and critique dominant US nationalism and Asian Americanist claims to coherence based on positivist notions of race, identity, etc. "Subjectlessness as a discursive ground for Asian American studies can, I think, help to identity and trace the shifting positionalities and complicated terrains of U.S. American culture and politics articulated to a globalized frame, by opening up the field to account for practices of subjectivity that might not be immediately visible." (11) Chuh makes a case for reckoning with intra-Asian American difference and for theory as important in a field that so often bifurcates itself into theory v. practice (with practice taking on the dominat, legitimized space of historical consituent for the field itself) - to do what Chuh suggests neccessitates a materialist engagement with literature that she takes on in her first two chapters. She examines Carlos Bulosan's America is in the Heart and the work of Bienvenido Santos to make her first point - the inability for AA to cope with the difference posed by Filipino American experience "compels us to hold as suspect the promise of justice through the achievement of subjectivity." (32) "'Filipinos' may be understood as a category of critique rather than identity." (56) She looks at texts on Japanese internment to locate a transnationalist critique of AA studies, to see beyond the ways in which AA has used nation as the main vector of understanding racial identity. "These legal and literary narratives compel us to identify the process of the affiliation of meaning to certain bodies as the collectivizing problematic anchoring and necessitating Asian American discourse." (63) "What I am suggesting is that the imperative for Asian Americanists to think in terms of transnationalism arise not only from globalization but also from recognizing the transnational within the national, from understanding that Asiatic racialization traces and materializes the transnational dimensions of U.S. national identity." (70) The next chapter expands on this imperative in its call for AA studies not to reinscribe Orientalist figures of othering on the Asian in Asian American. "What I am suggesting is that critically acknowledging the material effectivity of multiply located histories and chronologies...means recognizing the limitations of knowledge produced by distancing 'America' from 'Asia' as limitations that do ideological work...We might conceive of 'Asian America' as a heterotropic formation, one that enfigures the multiple and dissimilar spaces and places of discourse and history that collectively produce what seems at first glance, terminologically, to refer to a distinctly bounded site, 'America.'" (111) Finally, the last chapter looks at what is at stake in positing Postcolonial studies as important for AA studies. "Postcolonial studies contributes to Asian Americanist discourse by highlighting the ways that national identities come into being through negotiations with global nexuses of relations and power." (117) As such the US needs to be recognized as not just neocolonial, but as part of a history of empire and intra(?)colonization. "I want to suggest that Asian Americanists conceptually disown 'America,' the ideal, to further the work of creating home as a space relieved of states of domination...I am conceived of home as that condition in which there is an equality of ability to participate in negotiating and constructing the ethos of the places in which we live." (124) These Postcolonial critiques are important not only for our understanding of "America," but also for a critical engagement with Asian American studies as a discipline. "Asian American studies stands as a discourse not of 'minorities' but of the 'emergent dominate,' to borrow Gayatri Spivak's phrase (1997), Asian Americanist discourse must look to itself to ensure that the partial and variagated freedoms enjoyed by both Asian American studies and various Asian-raced peoples are not merely celebrated but are leading to an elsewhere." (145)
Keywords
Difference, Asian American studies, Asian Americanist, Poststructuralist, Subjectlessness, Anxiety, Undecidability
Other Thoughts
I have many feelings about the arguments put forth in this book, too many to elaborate here. Ask me about them sometime.
"Far from being a transparent, objective description of a knowable identity, the term [Asian American] may be conceived as a mediating presence that links bodies to the knowledge regimes of the U.S. nation. 'Asian America' is in this sense a metaphor for resistance and racism." (27)
"Recall that identity is a teleological narrative used in a politics of identity, one that posits a common origin and looks toward a common destiny." (33)
"Imagine Otherwise has suggested embracing the a priori meaninglessness of 'Asian American,' the absence of an identity anterior to naming." (149)
"What, finally, I think subjectlessness can help us to do is to articulate Asian American studies as an unbounded field, one that while in the structure of the academic institution is not structured by it." (151)
Other QE Works Cited
Anderson, B. Imagined Communities.(Postcolonial Asian American Studies)
Bhabha, H. Location of Culture (Postcolonial Asian American Studies)
Chatterjee, P. The Nation and its Fragments. (Postcolonial Asian American Studies)
Chuh, K and Shimikawa, K. Orientations (selections) (Postcolonial Asian American Studies)
Foucault, M. History of Sexuality (History and Theory of the Body)
Lowe, L. Immigrant Acts. (Postcolonial Asian American Studies)
Radhakrishnan, R. Diasporic Mediations (Postcolonial Asian American Studies)
Palumbo-Liu, D. Asian/American (Postcolonial Asian American Studies)
Shohat, E. Stam, R. Unthinking Eurocentricism (selections) (Film and Media Studies)
Said, E. Orientalism. (Postcolonial Asian American Studies)
Said, E. Culture and Imperialism (Postcolonial Asian American Studies)
Spivak, G. In Other Worlds (Postcolonial Asian American Studies)
Trinh, T.When the Moon Waxes Red (Postcolonial Asian American Studies)
Wong, S. Denationalization Reconsidered (Postcolonial Asian American Studies)
# posted by SMRT : 9:55 PM
Comments:
<< Home
Hi, I have also just finished reading this book and find the theory to be incredibly interesting. It does however seem a little utopian and its hard for me to actually understand how to enact "Imagine Otherwise" Do you think its possible to have one person effectively use subjectless discourse in everyday actions or is this theory only relevant to academics writing critical theory on Asian Americans?
Post a Comment
<< Home
