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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2> Dear Vladimir,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I will give an example of the relevance of the
politics of race in Asian studies.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>When I, as an Asian American not born in Korea,
discuss Korean minjung nationalist literature, am I not using Western dominant
narratives of democratic revolution, and thereby serving the mythic, hegemonic
American ideology of "melting pot"? As Rey Chow notes, it is important to
recognize Koreans' lived experiences of the ideology of democracy, and Koreans'
perceptions and translations of that ideology. In the U.S., "certain
ethnic groups, as a result of racism, will never be able to enact in full "the
script of "consent." (Wong, 1993:41): "With European ethnics, there
is enough cultural congruence with the Anglo mainstream, and enough reality in
the promised rewards of assimilation, to validate the rhetoric of consensual
nation-building and blunt the damage of generational divisions. Asian
Americans are socialized into embracing the same expectations but are denied
their full realization on a collective basis." (Wong 1993:
43).</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Ann</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Citation:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Sau-ling Cynthia Wong, Reading Asian American
Literature: From Necessity to Extravagance (Princeton: Princeton Univerrsity
Press, 1993).</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><A
href="http://home.myuw.net/asl/"></A> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=vladimir.tikhonov@east.uio.no
href="mailto:vladimir.tikhonov@east.uio.no">Vladimir Tikhonov</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=Koreanstudies@koreaweb.ws
href="mailto:Koreanstudies@koreaweb.ws">Korean Studies Discussion List</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Friday, September 26, 2003 1:59
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [KS] can Asian Americans
have a voice in Asian Studies?</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>Dear colleagues,<BR><BR>if what Ann Lee writes about the
atmosphere of the "WASP domination" in our field in the USA is true (as I have
never been over there, it is hard for me to assess the situation on my own),
that I cannot help concluding that, perhaps, old Soviet Union wasn't the worst
of all possible worlds. Several prominent ethnic Korean scholars won
recognition in their respective special fields (M.N.Pak - ancient history,
G.F.Kim - North Korean politics, Lim Su - folk sayings, etc.) as "dominant
authorities", so to say, and I really don't remember any talks about "tribe
wars" along ethnic lines among their students, so ethnically mixed as
they were. I don't think anybody really questioned - or would ever question -
the loyalty of the ethnic Korean "patriarchs" of Soviet/Russian Korean Studies
to Soviet/Russian culture or research traditions. Perhaps - I just guess - it
was old intelligentsia tradition of fighting against official
antisemitism/"patriotic" chauvinism in Tzarist Russia, in combination with
Tzarist/Soviet tradition of absorbing ethnically heterogeneous local elites,
that precluded any ethnic divisions in the Korean Studies field? Anyway, I can
only hope that the immunity to racialist taxonomies will survive in Russia,
despite all the efforts to the contrary on the part of its today's
rulers...<BR><BR>Vladimir Tikhonov <BR><BR><BR><BR>At 15:28 25.09.2003 -0700,
you wrote:<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=cite cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=arial size=2>Dear
list,</FONT><BR> <BR><FONT face=arial size=2>I have failed in my bid to
be a cultural comprador.</FONT><BR><FONT face=arial size=2>Collecting my
unemployment checks, I have time to read what I want to
read.</FONT><BR><FONT face=arial size=2>I can't help asking myself whether
or not Asian Americans can have a voice in Asian Studies.</FONT><BR><FONT
face=arial size=2>Orientalists remind us that only a native's "access" to
Asian culture could possibly give an Asian any use value in the field.
This results in pitting Asian Americans (issei, nisei, 1.5 generations, and
in betweens) against each other -- a divisive strategy that succeeds because
of the economics of Necessity, in which Asian Americans are only too willing
to sell each other out in order to survive. It is a strategy that
pre-empts any possible alliances that Asian Americans might try to form,
alliances that dominant whites find threatening.</FONT><BR><FONT face=arial
size=2>I remember a male WASP professor at Harvard (now at a different
school) asking department majors to introduce ourselves and our reasons for
majoring in East Asian Studies. One Asian student, recently
immigrated, said he wanted to study his culture. I said I had a
somewhat academic interest in Asia, rather than studying it as "my culture,"
since I was born in N.Y.C. and grew up here.</FONT><BR><FONT face=arial
size=2>The WASP male professor, perhaps sensing a smugness in my attitude,
immediately said, "But isn't that what it is? _Your_ culture?"
It was a harsh rebuke of my confidence in my American identity. My
skin color meant, to him, that I would never be accepted as an
American.</FONT><BR> <BR><FONT face=arial size=2>Ann
Lee</FONT><BR> <BR> <BR> </BLOCKQUOTE><X-SIGSEP>
<P></X-SIGSEP>Vladimir Tikhonov,<BR>Department of East European and Oriental
Studies,<BR>Faculty of Arts,<BR>University of Oslo,<BR>P.b. 1030, Blindern,
0315, Oslo, Norway.<BR>Fax: 47-22854140; Tel: 47-22857118<BR>Personal web
page: <A href="http://www.geocities.com/volodyatikhonov/volodyatikhonov.html"
eudora="autourl">http://www.geocities.com/volodyatikhonov/volodyatikhonov.html</A><BR>Electronic
classrooms: East Asian/Korean Society and
Politics:<BR>
<A href="http://www.geocities.com/uioeastasia2002/main.html"
eudora="autourl">http://www.geocities.com/uioeastasia2002/main.</A><A
href="http://www.geocities.com/uioeastasia2002/main.html"
eudora="autourl">html<BR></A>
East Asian/Korean Religion and
Philosophy:<BR>
<A href="http://www.geocities.com/uioeastasia2003/classroom.html"
eudora="autourl">http://</A>www.geocities.com<A
href="http://www.geocities.com/uioeastasia2003/classroom.html"
eudora="autourl">/uioeastasia2003/classroom.html</A><BR>
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