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Chow2002 The-Protestant-Ethnic-And-The-Spirit-Of-Capitalism.Pdf THE PROTESTANT ETHNIC AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM This page intentionally left blank THE PROTESTANT ETHNIC AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM REY CHOW COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS / NEW YORK Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex Copyright © 2002 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chow, Rey. The protestant ethnic and the spirit of capitalism / Rey Chow. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–231–12420–1 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 0–231–12421–X (paper : alk. paper) 1. Ethnicity—Political aspects—United States. 2. Ethnicity— Religious aspects—Protestant churches. 3. Capitalism—United States. 4. Postcolonialism—United States. 5. Cross-cultural orientation— United States. 6. United States—Ethnic relations. I. Title. GN560.U6 P76 2002 305.8—dc21 2002019492 Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America Designed by Lisa Hamm c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Preface vii Introduction: From Biopower to Ethnic Difference 1 CHAPTER 1 The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism 19 CHAPTER 2 Brushes with the-Other-as-Face: Stereotyping and Cross-Ethnic Representation 50 CHAPTER 3 Keeping Them in Their Place: Coercive Mimeticism and Cross-Ethnic Representation 95 CHAPTER 4 The Secrets of Ethnic Abjection 128 CHAPTER 5 When Whiteness Feminizes . : Some Consequences of a Supplementary Logic 153 Postscript: Beyond Ethnic Ressentiment? 183 Notes 193 Index 229 This page intentionally left blank Preface his book continues the work in cultural politics in which I have been engaged now for a decade. Its focus is the question T of ethnicity in late capitalist Western society, where cross-cul- tural and cross-ethnic transactions have become not only a daily routine but also an inevitability. Unlike works that deal with this subject in some social science disciplines (many of which I hold in great respect and cite in my discussions), my approach is neither purely sociological nor empirical (there are no surveys, statistics, or interviews). Rather, it consists of examinations of critical and theoretical, as well as literary, issues as they pertain to the ethnic as such; it foregrounds the politics of representation throughout these examinations; and it offers argumentative reassessments of various epistemological, disciplinary, and cross-cultural frame- works in which ethnicity is at stake in the contemporary world. As an introduction, I revisit Michel Foucault’s description of the emergence of Man in the post-Enlightenment age, looking in particular at those areas of Foucault’s texts in which the questions of race and ethnicity emerge suggestively, albeit ambiguously. By retracing the logic of Foucault’s ruminations on biopower and by pushing that logic toward the realm of postcolonized race and eth- nicity, I argue that the systematic pursuit and enforcement of life in modernity must be recognized as the backdrop to our contro- versial situations of racial and ethnic violence. In the first chapter, I put forth one of the key ideas in the entire book, namely, that the Preface viii notion of ethnicity as it is currently used is theoretically ambivalent, con- fusing, indeed self-contradictory. Although the term “ethnic” used to be deployed, before the nineteenth century, for boundary-setting purposes (by Jews and Christians to refer to gentiles and heathens), the modern use of the term tends to be universalist and inclusionary in that everyone is now considered to be ethnic in the sense of belonging to one or another grouping. Such an attempt at universalism and inclusionism, however, has also meant a disavowal of, and consequently an inability to account for, the hostility and intolerance that accompany ethnic struggles. A more satisfactory understanding of the politics of ethnicity may be reached, I contend, if we analyze the ways in which such politics par- takes of the Protestant work ethic that Max Weber identified as the spir- itual side of capitalism’s commodifying rationale. Although my interest is more in the literal sense of “protestant”—as pertaining to one who protests—than in the restricted historical sense of the religious followers of the Protestant Reformation, my arguments will show that our con- temporary culture of protest, too, needs to be seen within the framework of a prevalent work principle. As do some of Weber’s interpreters, what I consider most decisive about his theory is the effective structural col- laboration he pinpoints between the power of subjective belief (in salva- tion) as found in modern, secularized society and capitalist economism’s ways of hailing, disciplining, and rewarding identities constituted by cer- tain forms of labor. The charged figure that results from this collabora- tion, one whose features I have only begun to trace in this book, is what I call the protestant ethnic. Chapters 2 through 5, each with its own theoretical slant and focus- ing on a different set of texts, are devoted to what to me is the heart of the matter: the vicissitudes of cross-ethnic representational politics. Stereotyping as a dangerous yet unavoidable event in intercultural en- counters; coercive mimeticism and its institutional apparatuses of inter- pellation; autobiographical writing and its collectively narcissistic sense of abjection; the rise of femininity as a form of racial power in an uneven multiethnic world: these are the arenas in which I delineate a series of in- dependently complex yet mutually implicated critical debates. A concern that runs through the chapters is the controversial status of poststruc- turalist theory—how it has irrevocably radicalized cultural as well as tex- Preface ix tual studies but meanwhile has tended to remain iconophobic, to essen- tialize non-Western others’ differences in the form of timeless attributes, to conflate the mobility or instability of the sign with existential freedom, and to confine the practice of critically nuanced thinking within specific ethnic parameters. Finally, by way of a postscript, I discuss the typical situation in which ethnic authors, artists, and intellectuals who have be- come successful internationally tend to be condemned for selling out to white culture by critics within their own ethnic communities. I suggest understanding this as a complex of what may be called postcolonial eth- nic ressentiment, a kind of self contempt that is historically generated by the unequal and often humiliating contact with the white world but ends up, ironically, being directed against those who, ethnically speaking, are closest to one. The composition of this book began several years ago, when I was teaching in southern California. In a state that is, to all appearances, more progressive than others on the matter of racial and ethnic diversi- ty, I was haunted by an uneasiness: how is it that it is here, I found my- self asking, that I seem to be noticing and encountering such insidious forms of racism, oftentimes from those who profess to be the friends, in- deed the political allies, of racial and ethnic minorities? This question made it necessary for me to reflect on the economic and social relations between ethnicity as such and the popular discourses of liberalism, and especially to grasp the manner in which liberalism tends to couch its op- erational logic in, indeed to capitalize on, social inequity. As long as mi- norities’ rights to speak and to be are derived from and vested in the en- abling power of liberalism, it appears, and as long as these minorities are clearly subordinate to their white sponsors, things tend to remain un- problematic for the latter. Should the reality of this power relation be ex- posed and its hierarchical structure be questioned, however, violence of one kind or another usually erupts, and naked forms of white racist backlash quickly reassert themselves. In a land where ethnic minorities are so highly visible and significant in number, it is perhaps especially im- portant that such classic structures of subordination remain in force, al- ternating between their benevolent and their violent modes as circum- stances require. To this extent, this book is an attempt to probe some of the workings of such structures and their manifestations, though the im- Preface x plications that may be drawn go, I believe, considerably beyond the small corner of southern California in which I resided. Several groups of people need to be acknowledged for their direct and indirect contributions to the completion of this book. Leonard Tennen- house deserves special mention for his generously responsive readings of many pieces of my work and for making them seem more interesting than is ever intended by my conscious and unconscious minds combined. Nancy Armstrong, Chris Cullens, John Frow, Harry Harootunian, Marc Katz, Dorothy Ko, John Ma Kwok-ming, Dorothea von Mücke, and James Steintrager helped sustain my faith in intellectual work by provid- ing, with their own writings, admirable examples of scholarly erudition and critical intelligence. I am greatly indebted to Robyn Wiegman and Smaro Kamboureli for their constructive feedback on earlier versions of the manuscript: my own flaws and shortcomings aside, this book became a better one because of them. Jennifer Crewe, as always, is the wonder- fully enabling editor who made the book happen. To Austin Meredith, my companion, my coconspirator, and my home, I owe . everything. Sections and earlier versions of some of the chapters were previously published in the following journal issues: sections of the introduction in Postcolonial Studies 1, no. 2 (1998): 161–69; sections of chapters 2 and 3 in PMLA 116, no. 1 (2001): 69–74, and boundary 2 24, no. 2 (1997): 21– 45, and 25, no. 3 (1998): 1–24; an early version of chapter 4 in Traces 2 (2001): 53–77; an early version of chapter 5 in differences 11, no.
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