Re-signifying “Asia” in the Transnational Turn of Asian/American Studies
Abstract
Chien-Ting Lin
Re-signifying “Asia” in the Transnational Turn of Asian/American Studies
Abstract
Bringing inter-Asia cultural studies into conversation with Asian American critique, this paper aims to reframe the critical analysis of the scattered hegemonies of US imperialism in articulating the transpacific historical interconnections. Rather than privileging the US as a primary site of investigation and critique, I draw careful attention to the Cold War conditions of inter-Asia migration as an entry point for discussing how the geopolitics of Taiwanese modernity, from the Cold War up to neoliberal globalization, are inextricably linked to Japanese colonialism, US militarism and modernization, and Chinese globalization. To develop my theoretical and historical (re)conceptualization of “Asia” in Asian/American studies, I look at how the migrant narrative of migrant workers in the nonfiction novel Our Stories speaks to the power dynamics of the US Cold War involvement in Asia, neoliberal globalization, and Taiwan subimperialist relations with its neighboring countries. Whereas Asian American cultural critique offers a new analytics to enable a reconceptualization of Asian America without confining it to an identitarian category, inter-Asia cultural studies redirect critical attention to the historical undercurrents of inter-Asia geopolitics that are largely obscured by the dominant knowledge paradigm of the US Cold War politics in the regions of Asia Pacific.
References
Brown, Wendy. “Neo-liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy.” Theory & Event 7.1 (2003): 1-25. Online.
Chen, Kuan-Hsing. Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. Print.
Cumings, Bruce. Parallax Visions: Making Sense of American-East Relations at the End of the Century. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999.
Derrida, Jacques. On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness. Trans. Mark Dooley and Michael Hughes. New York: Routledge, 2001. Print.
Grewal, Inderpal. Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. Print.
Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. Print.
Ku, Yu-ling. Our Stories: Migration and Labour in Taiwan. Trans. Agnes Khoo. Selangor: Strategic Information and Research Development Centre (SIRD), 2011. Print.
Lin, Chien-Ting. “Governing ‘Secrecy’ in Medical Modernity: Knowledge Power and the Miyi Outlaws.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 16.2 (2015): 227-243.
Lowe, Lisa. Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996. Print.
Lowe, Lisa. The Intimacies of Four Continents. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015. Print.
Ong, Aihwa. Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. Print.
Parry, Amie Elizabeth. “Inter-Asian Migratory Roads: the Gamble of Time in Our Stories.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 13.2 (2012): 176-188. Print.
Stoler, Ann Laura. Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Print.
Tadiar, Neferti. Things Fall Away: Philippine Historical Experience and the Makings of Globalization. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. Print.
Yoneyama, Lisa. Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Print.
Yoneyama, Lisa. “Traveling Memories, Contagious Justice: Americanization of Japanese War Crimes at the End of the Post-Cold War.” Journal of Asian American Studies 6.1 (2003): 57-93. Print.
Faculty of Business & Law Department of Finance Deakin University Melbourne Burnwood Australia Australia
The Copyright Holder of the submitted text is the Author. The Reader is granted the rights to use the material available in the RIAS websites and pdf documents under the provisions of the Creative CommonsAttribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0). Any commercial use requires separate written agreement with the Author and a proper credit line indicating the source of the original publication in RIAS.
- License
The University of Silesia Press provides immediate open access to journal’s content under the Creative Commons BY 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Authors who publish with this journal retain all copyrights and agree to the terms of the above-mentioned CC BY 4.0 license.
- Author’s Warranties
The author warrants that the article is original, written by stated author/s, has not been published before, contains no unlawful statements, does not infringe the rights of others, is subject to copyright that is vested exclusively in the author and free of any third party rights, and that any necessary written permissions to quote from other sources have been obtained by the author/s.
If the article contains illustrative material (drawings, photos, graphs, maps), the author declares that the said works are of his authorship, they do not infringe the rights of the third party (including personal rights, i.a. the authorization to reproduce physical likeness) and the author holds exclusive proprietary copyrights. The author publishes the above works as part of the article under the licence "Creative Commons Attribution - By the same conditions 4.0 International".
ATTENTION! When the legal situation of the illustrative material has not been determined and the necessary consent has not been granted by the proprietary copyrights holders, the submitted material will not be accepted for editorial process. At the same time the author takes full responsibility for providing false data (this also regards covering the costs incurred by the University of Silesia Press and financial claims of the third party).
- User Rights
Under the Creative Commons Attribution license, the users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) the article for any purpose, provided they attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
- Co-Authorship
If the article was prepared jointly with other authors, the signatory of this form warrants that he/she has been authorized by all co-authors to sign this agreement on their behalf, and agrees to inform his/her co-authors of the terms of this agreement.
I hereby declare that in the event of withdrawal of the text from the publishing process or submitting it to another publisher without agreement from the editorial office, I agree to cover all costs incurred by the University of Silesia in connection with my application.
