Minoritarian Politics in the Age of Neoliberalism
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)( :.,l:J l;J~)} "LOOSENING THE SEAMS" MINORITARIAN POLITICS IN THE AGE OF NEOLIBERALISM A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNNERSITY OF HAWAI'I IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN POLITICAL SCIENCE AUGUST 2005 By Eric Ishiwata Dissertation Committee: Michael J. Shapiro, Chairperson Noenoe Silva Nevzat Soguk Kathy Ferguson Jon Osorio TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i PREFACE ii CHAPTER ONE 1 1. THREE MOMENTS 1 2. PATHOLOGIZING DIFFERENCE 3 3. "HEALING" AND THE PRO-BUSINESS COUNTER-MOVEMENT 7 4. FROM "PROGRESSIVE" TO MINORITARIAN POLITICS 9 5. THE PROMISE OF "MINGLING" 13 6. ROADMAP 19 CHAPTER TWO 22 1. "BUGGERING" WELLSIAN STUDIES 22 2. THE EMERGENCE OF NEOLIBERALISM 26 3. THE HISTORICAL FLUCTUATIONS OF ANGLO-AMERICAN "LIBERALISM" 31 4. INTERVENTION 38 5. T.H. HUXLEY AND "ETHICAL EVOLUTION" 40 6. WELLS'S SOCIO-SCIENTIFIC JOURNALISM 45 7. WELLS'S THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU 57 8. THE "PROMISE OF HYBRIDITY" 61 9. PROBLEMATIZING HYBRIDITY 67 10. THE PACIFIC AS A RACIAL FRONTIER 78 CHAPTER THREE 85 1. INTRODUCTION 85 2. "RACIAL JUSTICE" IN PRESENT-DAY HAWAI'I 89 3. FROM DISTRIBUTIVE TO SOCIAL JUSTICE 93 4. RICE V. CAYETANO 94 5. FOCUSED GENEALOGY 101 6. EARLY CONCEPTIONS OF RACE IN HAWAI'I 103 7. LEGAL APPARATUS 105 8. BUREAUCRATIC APPARATUS 108 9. INTELLECTUAL APPARATUS 113 10. SOCIAL DISTANCE AND INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE 119 11. DISSONANCE BETWEEN SIMMEL'S "STRANGER" & PARK'S "MARGINAL MAN" 120 12. STONEQUIST'S MARGINAL MAN IN HAWAII 122 13. ROMANZO ADAMS'S INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE IN HAWAII 129 14. SOCIAL PROCESS IN HAWAII: CANONIZING PARK'S LEGACY 137 CHAPTER FOUR 141 1. INTRODUCTION 141 2. A SURFACING OF AMERICA'S INTERIOR FRONTIERS 146 3. A FINGER IN THE WOUND 149 4. HUNTINGTON'S WHO ARE WE? 151 5. BRAZIL'S RACIAL DEMOCRACY 158 6. TIME'S "NEW FACE OF AMERICA" 161 7. TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICA'S RACIAL DISCOURSE 166 8. MULTIRACIAL AMERICANS AND THE US 2000 CENSUS 169 9. CONCLUSION 176 CHAPTER FIVE 179 1. "THE STRENGTH TO LIVE" IN A NEOLIBERAL JAPAN 179 2. IMIN MONDAI: JAPAN'S "IMMIGRATION PROBLEM" 186 3. JAPAN'S NIKKEIJIN "RE-MIGRATION" PHENOMENON 190 4. INSTITUTIONALIZING JAPAN'S "NEWEST ETHNIC MINORITY" 192 5. JAPAN'S NATIVIST ORDERING 196 6. "THE SLOGAN IS - MADE IN JAPAN = [MIJ)" 198 7. REFIGURING THE "FAMILY STATE" 203 8. INCORPOREAL TRANSFORMATIONS IN RHAPSODY IN AUGUST 205 9. THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE "HOME" IN NHK'S SAKURA 213 10. CONCLUSION 217 CHAPTER SIX 220 1. INTRODUCTION 220 2. SETTING OUT: HE'E NALU AS A SOURCE OF INIQUITY 222 3. WAVE ONE: THE POLITICS OF SURFING IN HAWAI'I 223 4. WAVE TWO: CONFRONTING THE MACRO-POLITICAL LIMITS 229 5. WAVE THREE: HAWAII'S HETEROTOPIA 233 6. WAVE FOUR: HE'E NALU AS POLITICAL MOVEMENT 237 7. WAVE FIVE: SIDEWALK SURFING 241 8. "ONE LAST WAVE" 243 BIBLIOGRAPHY 245 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation was funded by the Crown Prince Akihito Scholarship and the Sen Award/orDiasporic Studies. In Japan, I need thank Susumu Yamaguchi, Tokyo University's Department ofSocial Psychology, as well as the Asano family for their support during that period. I am sincerely grateful my experience in the University of Hawaii's Department ofPolitical Science. In particular, I appreciate the guidance and friendships provided by Michael Shapiro, Noenoe Silva, Sankaran Krishna, Jon Goldberg-Hiller, and GeoffWhitehall. None ofthis would have been possible without the love and patience provided by my family: my grandmother, Helen Haruko Ishiwata, my father, Glen Ishiwata, my mother, Joan-whose undying support and enthusiasm pulled me though a number of discouraging times-and my wife, Yukari Ura, who gave me the kick in the pants needed to finish writing. Last, the dissertation is dedicated to the memory ofmy friend, Jorge Fernandes. His fingerprints pervade throughout this project. Ifthere is anything interesting, provocative, or particularly well-argued within these pages, it is because ofJorge. Likewise, those portions that are clumsy or in Jorge's words, "theoretically impoverished," are simply sections that he never got a chance to read. Jorge, I miss you everyday. 1 PREFACE This dissertation is organized around a single research question: how is it possible to engage in immigrant, racial, and indigenous issues in an age where neoliberal politics has appropriated the progressive discourse of"fairness," 'justice," and "racial equality?" The origins ofthis question emerged from my experiences in the Department of Ethnic Studies at Colorado State University. Like most Ethnic Studies departments, it was built around three components: 1) Civil Rights, 2) identity politics, and 3) recovering histories. Ofthese three components, it was an identity-based approach and more generally, a politics ofrecognition, which was promoted as the organizing principle behind contemporary racial politics in the United States. While this tradition has rendered the notions of"fairness," 'justice," and "racial equality" as the fundamental validations ofprogressive social movements, I increasingly began to confront the limitations ofidentity-based movements. One experience from my undergraduate days in particular underscores this point. At the encouragement ofa Latino Studies professor, I decided to attend one ofthe meetings ofthe university's Chicano student organization. Because the university was 87% ''white,'' I felt that it could be a productive moment ofcoalition building. Nevertheless, before the meeting commenced, one ofthe leaders took me aside and said, "It's cool that you're here and all...but how do we know you're not a spy?" While I was initially shocked, the essence ofhis statement resonated with a growing tension from my own experiences within Asian American Studies; namely, that my emergence as an "Asian American male" came at the expense ofother possible identities. This awareness came in no small part from my Jewish mother's nagging to never forget that "you're more than just Asian." These 11 experiences brought to the fore the limits ofidentity politics-that identity can only be produced through the either/or process ofdisjunctive difference: in my case Asian American, NOT Jewish. Feeling confined by the strategic essentialisms ofidentity politics, I came to the University ofHawai'i with the intention ofexploring a hybrid or hapa identity. In my preliminary research, however, it became clear that the literature on mixed race or multiracial identity was scarce and what did exist was theoretically impoverished. Time and again, these treatments ofmulatto, mestizo, hapa, or mixblood identities, sought to naturalize hybridity it as its own distinct category. Ifanything, these literatures worked to substantiate, rather than threaten the mutual-exclusivity ofcategories produced through identity/difference. By the time I began piecing together my dissertation proposal, the debates surrounding the US 2000 Census and the possibility ofadding a "multiracial" category had moved to the fore ofthe American discourse on race. Led predominately by a group ofmultiracial UC Berkeley students and the concerned parents ofbiracial children, the so-called "multiracial movement" gave racial mixing unprecedented media attention. I became alarmed, however, when no one other than Newt Gingrich, then Speaker ofthe House, emerged as one ofthe most fervent proponents ofthe "multiracial" category. Gingrich declared that such a move could "begin to phase out the outmoded, divisive, and rigid classification ofAmericans as 'blacks' or 'whites' or other single races." "Ultimately," he argued, "our goal is to have one classification-American." It was at that moment that I became clued into the conservative appropriation of"equality"; that after the experiencing a number ofset backs during the Civil Rights era, conservative 111 forces had commandeered identity politics in a manner that disabled the political claims made by native, immigrant, and minority activists. When placing these Census debates in relation to the concurrent Rice v. Cayetano Supreme Court Case (2000), I became increasingly uneasy about the implications surrounding these contending employments of 'justice," "fairness," and "racial equality." To put it simply, conservative forces seemed to be out-maneuvering progressives on their own terrain ofidentity politics. The issue, however, was not that simple; the preexisting language ofDemocrat vs. Republican or Liberal vs. Conservative did not coincide with what appeared to be an overall trend towards an antiracial, ahistorical recoding ofnational bodies: like Gingrich said, the goal was to erase or obscure intra-national differences to the point that the nation was comprise ofonly undifferentiated Americans. With these socio-economic distinctions eradicated, one's successes or failures could be explained only through the discourse of"merit." The renovation ofthis Darwinian "survival ofthe fittest" ethic is emblematic ofthe tenets ofneoliberalism, which individuates and atomizes society in order to justify privatization and absolve the state ofits responsibilities and commitments to social welfare. Because neoliberalism rides upon the notion ofan undifferentiated society (antiracial and ahistorical), it seemed as though an effective way to mount a political response would be to take up the issues ofidentity, difference, and the logic of categorization. The neoliberal commandeering ofidentity meant that a return to identity politics would be insufficient. Fortunately, as I prepared for my comprehensive exams, I was introduced to a range ofliteratures related to this