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

[Janice Kim]

Dear Ann,

Your impassioned message forces us to confront perhaps the most pressing problems of postcolonial/postmodern society.  Whether we live in Korea, the US or elsewhere, how do we define ethnicity, culture and identity in an increasingly globalized world?  I am just as perplexed, however, by your message and your question.  I am not sure that what you meant to convey was as simple as “Can Asian Americans have a voice in Asian Studies?”  Perhaps exploring your argument further will inform our understanding of ethnicity, culture and identity.

First, you pose the rhetorical question, “Can Asian Americans have a voice in Asian Studies?”  Then, you imply “no,” because “orientalists” privilege ‘natives’ over immigrants and pit Asians against Asians; preventing alliances that “dominant whites find threatening.” (Hence, the WASP hegemonist divides us to rule).  Then you refer to your professor who seemed to have done the opposite.  By saying that Asian culture was ‘your’ culture, he assumed that you were ‘Asian’ like your native Asian classmates.  (Now is the professor symbolic of an orientalist or a WASP or are the two synonymous?)  Regardless, you found his grouping you and the ‘fresh-off-the-boat’ foreigner together to be offensive.

Cultural blinders aside, in this context, he effectively said, “you have a voice in Asian studies by virtue of your ethnicity,” thereby accrediting you with some kind of engrained cultural capital.  He didn’t offend you by dividing you and your colleague or by saying that you had no voice in Asian studies.  What you might have found offensive is that, in his response, he might have implied that Asian Americans are ONLY Asian.  In which case, your question would be best rephrased: “Can Asian Americans have a voice in American ‘studies’ or, rather, US intellectual culture?”

Personally, I disagree with your good professor.  While there might be genuine cultural capital accrued from being raised by natives, those best trained and experienced in Asian Studies, regardless of their ethnicity, should have the greatest voice in Asian Studies.  Asian Americans undoubtedly influence American perspectives and policy concerning ‘Asia’ (an ambiguous term).  Whether they SHOULD have a voice in Asian Studies as an ethnic right, I’ll leave to debate.  Asian Americans SHOULD, however, have a voice in American ‘studies,’ policy and culture as a civil right.  Your message seems to concern the latter issue; you seem frustrated those of European descent having a greater voice than Asians or Asian Americans in Asian Studies in the US.  While I don’t think that Asian Studies should be exclusively dominated men of European descent, I don’t think it should privilege Asians either.  In a country composed mostly of European descendants, there are now more native Asians and

 Asian Americans in the field than ever before.  

The politics is changing but, as historical evidence repeatedly shows, cultural change takes time.  While I fully sympathize with your frustration and anger, calling people WASPs might not be the most effective way to go about promoting Asian American voices in US academe including Korean Studies.  

As Gibran writes, anger or pain is ‘the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.’  Let’s hope your courageous expression of pain helps us break down the barriers of our understanding.

Good luck.  

Janice Kim

-- 
Assistant Professor of History
York University, Department of History
2140 Vari Hall, 4700 Keele Street
Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3, Canada
T: 416 736 5123, F: 416 736 5836, jkim at yorku.ca


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



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