[KS] can Asian Americans have a voice in Asian Studies?

Vladimir Tikhonov vladimir.tikhonov at east.uio.no
Fri Sep 26 04:59:30 EDT 2003


Dear colleagues,

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...

Vladimir Tikhonov



At 15:28 25.09.2003 -0700, you wrote:
>Dear list,
>
>I have failed in my bid to be a cultural comprador.
>Collecting my unemployment checks, I have time to read what I want to read.
>I can't help asking myself whether or not Asian Americans can have a voice 
>in Asian Studies.
>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.
>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.
>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.
>
>Ann Lee
>
>
>

Vladimir Tikhonov,
Department of East European and Oriental Studies,
Faculty of Arts,
University of Oslo,
P.b. 1030, Blindern, 0315, Oslo, Norway.
Fax: 47-22854140; Tel: 47-22857118
Personal web page: 
http://www.geocities.com/volodyatikhonov/volodyatikhonov.html
Electronic classrooms: East Asian/Korean Society and Politics:
                        http://www.geocities.com/uioeastasia2002/main.html
                        East Asian/Korean Religion and Philosophy:
                        http://www.geocities.com/uioeastasia2003/classroom.html

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