"Peripheral" Chinese Americans and the Cultural Politics of Chinese Diaspora, Transnationalism, and Return
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"PERIPHERAL" CHINESE AMERICANS AND THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF CHINESE DIASPORA, TRANSNATIONALISM, AND RETURN By KENG WAH KENNETH CHAN A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 1999 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my dissertation committee for their suggestions, constructive criticism, and, most of all, encouragement through the entire writing process; my parents for their emotional and financial support; and, of course, my wife Mary for her love, understanding, and endurance throughout my academic career. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii ABSTRACT v CHAPTERS 1 FROM PERIPHERY TO PERIPHERY: "PERIPHERAL" CHINESE AMERICANS AND THE MYTHOGRAPHY OF CHINESE RETURN 1 Hong Kong 97: Return in the Chinese Diasporic Imaginary 10 Problematizing Return: Cultural Traditionalism and U.S. Orientalism 20 Coda: Reading "Return" in Chinese America 25 Notes 33 2 CHINESE COSMOPOLITANISM CRITIQUED: CRITICAL ALTERNATIVES IN THE WORK OF LI-YOUNG LEE 41 Indonesia in Crisis: Race, Class, and Chinese Transnational Capital 41 Contemporary Chinese Cosmopolitanism: Hegemonic Alliances 45 Winged Deterritorialization and Cultural Cannibalism: The Cosmopolitical Visions of Li-Young Lee 50 Notes 65 3 CRISES IN THE HOMELAND(S): HONG KONG AMERICANS AND THE ART OF CULTURAL NEGOTIATION 71 Taking Sides? 71 Ambiguities of Hope: Marilyn Chin on the Crisis in Tiananmen 78 Visualizing Hong Kong: Wayne Wang on the Crisis of the 1997 Handover 88 Notes 100 4 THE POLITICS OF POSTCOLONIAL HYBRIDITY: THE MEMOIR OF SHIRLEY GEOK-LIN LIM 105 "The Native Daughter Made Good" 105 Critiques of Postcolonial Hybridity 108 iii A "Fugitive Presence" Determined 112 Notes 129 5 POLITICAL INERTIA AND THE SINGAPOREAN IN DL\SPORA: REFLECTIONS ON THE MICHAEL FAY DEBACLE AND FIONA CHEONG'S POETICS OF INNOCENCE 133 Reading the Singaporean in Diaspora 133 The Michael Fay Case: Nationalism, Crisis, and Human Rights 137 Trust/Oppression; Fiona Cheong's Poetics of Iimocence 142 Notes 152 BIBLIOGRAPHY 156 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 168 iv Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy "PERIPHERAL" CHINESE AMERICANS AND THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF CHINESE DIASPORA, TRANSNATIONALISM, AND RETURN By Keng Wah Kenneth Chan December 1999 Chairman: R. Brandon Kershner Major Department: English Department The ethnic category of "peripheral" Chinese Americans encompasses ethnic Chinese who do not come from mainland China but come from other parts of Asia and Southeast Asia such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. In the struggle with their hybrid and diasporic identities and their double marginality, these "peripheral" Chinese Americans have to confront not just U.S. Orientalism but also Chinese nativism's claim to cultural traditionalism in the name of racial authenticity. The latter is achieved through the historical and ideological workings and transformations of Chinese return, and its influence on the formation of a Chinese transnational imaginary. The impact of return on this imaginary emerges in the 1997 Hong Kong handover, which one can theorize as a mass-mediated, globalized space where the ideology of return is disseminated to an imaginary community of diasporic Chinese. The handover and its terrifying Other, Tiananmen Square, form critical and contradictory aspects of the V diasporic consciousness of Hong Kong Americans, forcing them to engage in cultural negotiations, as Marilyn Chin's poetry in The Phoenix Gone, The Terrace Empty and Wayne Wang's Chinese Box illustrate. One finds another configuration of return in a Chinese cosmopolitanism that forges a link between transnational capital and neo- Confucian humanism. Going beyond a critique of this alliance, the work of Li-Young Lee presents the beginnings of a critical alternative to this cosmopolitanism. The multiply-inscribed identities of "peripheral" Chinese Americans also suggest the theoretical importance of hybridity and the challenge it presents to Chinese return and the contradictions of cultural identity formation. Although Shirley Geok-lin Lim's academic memoir Among the White Moonfaces effectively uses cultural hybridity to unhinge the hegemony of Western imperialism and "Third World" cultural chauvinism, it fails to address the questions of class privilege and institutional elitism. And finally, as a Singaporean-Chinese in the United States, I write myself into this project through an analysis of my response to the Michael Fay incident and an examination of Fiona Cheong's poetics of innocence in The Scent ofthe Gods, in order to foreground the Singaporean American's struggle to overcome the politics of inertia. vi CHAPTER 1 FROM PERIPHERY TO PERIPHERY: "PERIPHERAL" CHINESE AMERICANS AND THE MYTHOGRAPHY OF CHINESE RETURN The discursive terrain of Asian American studies in the 1990s has undergone significant changes since the inception of the Asian American Movement in the late 1960s and the formation of the first Asian American studies program at the University of California at Berkeley and San Francisco State University.' In re-assessing the field of Asian American literary studies, King-kok Cheung notes that while "identity politics - with its stress on cultural nationalism and American nativity - governed earlier theoretical and critical formulations, the stress is not on heterogeneity and diaspora. The shift has been from seeking to 'claim America' to forging a connection between Asia and Asian America."^ In a specific way, Cheung's observation exemplifies James Clifford's argument that "diasporic language appears to be replacing, or at least supplementing, minority discourse."^ It comes as no surprise that this foregrounding of heterogeneity and diaspora within Asian American social and critical discourse arises in tandem with the economic ascendancy of Asian countries within the Pacific Rim, particularly in the 1980s and early 1990s, and with the post-Worid War II neo-colonial entanglements of the United States within the region in the form of anti-Communist military adventurism and transnational capitalist hegemony. The U.S. Cold War era policy of Communist containment is 1 2 inextricably bound to the promotion of capitalist ideology through, for instance, the political support of certain authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes in Asia, so as to promote political "stability" in the region and, consequently, to ensure a supply of markets and cheap labor for U.S. transnational corporations as part of their flexible accumulation strategy. This political and economic network created ultimately facilitates the diasporic flows of immigrants, exiles, refugees, students, professionals, and intellectuals into the U.S.,^ especially from the "Third World" and, in particular, Asia. This Asian influx was due in part to the Immigration Act of 1965, which marked a significant and important shift in a U.S. immigration policy that had been plagued by a racist history of anti-Asian legislation dating back to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.^ The 1965 law fundamentally reversed the earlier policy of exclusion by dismantling "the national-origins quotas and the Asia-Pacific Triangle concept," both set up by Congress to hmit Asian immigration, and by encouraging reunification of family members separated by the exclusion acts.' This political "change of heart" might in part be attributed to the fact that the U.S. government's position had become increasingly contradictory in its attempt to maintain a racist policy at home while functioning as the unofficial global police in criticizing human rights violations and abuses abroad. For instance, after World War Two, the international community's "acceptance of the U.S. as wartime leader of the fi-ee world added pressure to abolish all racially discriminating policies and to adopt immigration policies congruous with democracy's fight against fascism."* Another reason for the 1965 shift in policy was to promote the interests of U.S. transnational capital in the Asia-Pacific region, for the U.S. government "could no longer afford to maintain a blatantly racist immigration policy with respect to the 3 region"' when its goal was to create a political and social climate in the Pacific Rim countries congenial to U.S. business interests. By briefly drawing out the relationships between transnational capitalism, the trans-Pacific Asian migration, and the U.S. Immigration Act of 1965, 1 seek to highlight their significance to the current emphasis in Asian American studies on the problematics of heterogeneity and diaspora, especially by cultural and literary critics in the field. In opening the immigration floodgates, the U.S. government did not anticipate the in- pouring of Asian immigrants, not only from China and Japan (as families are being reunited after years of separation due to the exclusion acts) but also from India, the '° Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other Southeast Asian countries. Although the presence of these new Asian migrants has infused "new blood" into the Asian American communities, they also fiulher contribute to the heterogeneity, hybridity, and multiplicity" of Asian America in ways that extend beyond the categories of ethnicity and national origin. By conceptualizing the Asian American experience through the notions of heterogeneity, hybridity, and multiplicity, cultural theorists