Orientations: Mapping Studies in the Asian Diaspora

By Kandice Chuh

Book Overview

Asian and Asian American studies emerged, respectively, from Cold War and social protest ideologies. Yet, in the context of contemporary globalization, can these ideological distinctions remain in place? Suggesting new directions for studies of the Asian diaspora, the prominent scholars who contribute to this volume raise important questions about the genealogies of these fields, their mutual imbrication, and their relationship to other disciplinary formations, including American and ethnic studies.
With its recurrent themes of transnationalism, globalization, and postcoloniality, Orientations considers various embodiments of the Asian diaspora, including a rumination on minority discourses and performance studies, and a historical look at the journal Amerasia. Exploring the translation of knowledge from one community to another, other contributions consider such issues as Filipino immigrants' strategies for enacting Asian American subjectivity and the link between area studies and the journal Subaltern Studies. In a section that focuses on how disciplines-or borders-form, one essay discusses "orientalist melancholy," while another focuses on the construction of the Asian American persona during the Cold War. Other topics in the volume include the role Asian immigrants play in U.S. racial politics, Japanese American identity in postwar Japan, Asian American theater, and the effects of Asian and Asian American studies on constructions of American identity.

Contributors. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Kuan-Hsing Chen, Rey Chow, Kandice Chuh, Sharon Hom, Yoshikuni Igarashi, Dorinne Kondo, Russell Leong, George Lipsitz, Lisa Lowe, Martin F. Manalansan IV, David Palumbo-Liu, R. Radhakrishnan, Karen Shimakawa, Sau-ling C. Wong

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0822327392
• ISBN13: 9780822327394
• Release Date: September 2001
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.7" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Globalization, Asia, the Asian American and Context

Asian and Asian American studies surface, in that order, from Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement (Chu and Shimakawa, Orientations 296). Kandice Chuh and Karen Shimakawa edit Orientations collecting essays that write to speak about what was then a context of contemporary globalization. In the midst of all this talk about globalization and Transnationalism what is going to happen to the core discussion of ideology and Civil Rights? (Chu and Shimakawa, Orientations 153-171) Chu, et al study the construction of the Asian American persona during the Cold War, the role Asian immigrants play in U.S. racial politics, Japanese American identity in postwar Japan, Asian American theater, and the impact of Asian and Asian American studies on formation of an American identity (Chu and Shimakawa, Orientations 9, 57-59). Chuh and Shimakawa as well as other notables in the field propose new trajectories for studies of the Asian diaspora. Important scholars who chimed in on this discussion raise a series of crucial questions about the genealogies of these fields, their mutual concerns, and their connections to other disciplines, of note are Asian, American, and Asian American Studies (Chu and Shimakawa, Orientations 38, 293). With its repeated reflection on Transnationalism, globalization, and postcoloniality, Orientations mulls over various "embodiments" of the Asian diaspora, including musings on minority discourses and performance studies, as well as a historical look at the journal Amerasia. Exploring the epistemological connections from one community and one discipline to another, we begin to see the connections between Filipino immigrant studies and enacting Asian American subjectivity and their connections to Subaltern Studies (Chu and Shimakawa, Orientations 267-276).