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

Ann Sung-hi Lee asl at myuw.net
Sun Sep 28 14:35:00 EDT 2003


  Dear Vladimir,

I will give an example of the relevance of the politics of race in Asian studies.
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).

Ann

Citation:
Sau-ling Cynthia Wong, Reading Asian American Literature: From Necessity to Extravagance (Princeton: Princeton Univerrsity Press, 1993).

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Vladimir Tikhonov 
  To: Korean Studies Discussion List 
  Sent: Friday, September 26, 2003 1:59 AM
  Subject: Re: [KS] can Asian Americans have a voice in Asian Studies?


  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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