Scholarship is hard

My advisor’s teaching an interesting class this semester where we read books that are not considered “canonical” Asian American literature. The question what counts as Asian American literature has come up frequently, although we’ve never gotten around to really discussing it.  My advisor has mentioned more than once, both in the class and at her talk, that Asian American studies is in crisis. Is there a future for Asian American studies?

Frankly, it’s a question that makes me a bit nervous. I’d like to hope that there is a future for the field, since I see myself joining it. But my advisor doesn’t seem that positive. And then there’s people like The Mean Woman who would loudly question if there’s any significance in the term “Asian” at all.  A postcolonialist and a self-proclaimed Marxist, she thinks Asian American studies is just identity politics. I really had to hold myself back from talking back to her. There were a bunch of things I wanted to say. “When you take to task Asian American studies for its lack of representation of South Asians, is that not an identity-based critique? How can you critique the field for being nested in identity politics and still criticize it for not representing South Asians? People in Asian American studies know that South Asians have long been marginalized in the field and are trying to address that. But you have to look at it from the point of view of the discipline’s historical formation. And if we move on to discuss the limits of disciplinary formations, there’s a lot about postcolonial studies I can criticize. I mean, what about the fact that postcolonial studies is Anglophone and Francophone dominant? Non-Anglophone and non-Francophone postcolonies have no representation at all in postcolonial studies. KOREA has no representation whatsoever in postcolonial studies. How are you going to account for THAT?”

Ah. As you can see, I have a lot against The Mean Woman. The thing is, I don’t care whether people talk about Korea’s colonial experience in Asian American studies or in postcolonial studies. I just think it’s something that should be studied and discussed. Just as I think the entire history of colonialism should be studied and discussed. If people in Asian American studies are now looking more at the intersection of East Asian studies and Asian American studies and trying to account for previously neglected histories of suffering and oppression, The Mean Woman should be supportive of that. Not try to engage in a turf battle. Or try to delegitimize other people’s fields.

When it comes to questions such as is there a future to Asian American studies, I think a little differently from my advisor (Not that anyone asks me what I think, ha ha ha). Maybe it’s because I don’t know all the specifics of the “crisis” in questions, but I personally think Asian American studies can have a future as long as there are Asians in the U.S. And by the look of things, it doesn’t seem like Asian immigration to the U.S., or Asian residence in the U.S. is going to stop any time soon. (Thanks to U.S. supremacy.) It might be the case that the Asians in the U.S. will be more Asians born outside the U.S. than in the U.S., hence making the claim for Americanness a less and less viable mission of Asian American studies. Kandice Chuh and others’ work on transnationalism I think has already gone here. But I’d like to think that this means more possibilities for Asian American studies than vice versa.

I heard Laura Briggs mention that when she was putting together the essay collection Haunted by Empire with her coeditors that she noticed the absence of U.S. ethnic studies scholars in the discussion. In wanting to come up with an analytic and explanatory tool more precise and sharper than just “empire”, it seemed like Briggs was suggesting that we turn to U.S. ethnic studies scholars, people who knew before empire studies became hot that domestic racism seriously undercut the promise of democracy. Not to simply repeat the Third Worldism of the 80s–because I think there were some visible limits to that idea and practice–but I think the oppression confronted by domestic minorities and (neo)colonial subjects should be able to lead to new coalitional practices.

What I’m unsure about here is what would constitute the bases for coalitional thinking and practice. Following my advisor, I’m trying to think about historical materialism, if not Marxism, in thinking beyond the nation-state and thinking ways of addressing structures of oppression. But I run into so many problems in doing so. I can’t help feeling like I’ve been there, I’ve done that, I know it doesn’t work. Knowing the struggle of the Leftist intellectual tradition in Korea (they seem to lose more and more ground by the minute), I’m kind of hesitant to place my bet there. Maybe it’s just the predicament of coming from a very beleaguered country, constantly aware of how it’s being hemmed in by global capital and the U.S. and always trying so hard to find a means of survival in such a situation.

Anyway, I’m planning to spend a week perusing the works of Paik (Nakcheong) when I go home this winter to find out more about the Leftist intellectual tradition in Korea. One thing that I keep noticing when I hear U.S. scholars of the Left is that they seem to have, ahem, a pretty romanticized view of communist regimes including North Korea. I find it pretty bizarre, and as much as I hate to say this, I suspect some Orientalism here. I mean, I know right-wing Korean scholars have done a lot of work to villify the “Reds” in the North. But leftist Korean intellectuals have always tried hard to both fight state oppression and forge relations with the North without romanticizing communism or defending the dictatorship in place there. I find it somewhat incomprehensible that U.S. scholars should look to North Korea (to which they really have no exposure instead of looking at Leftist intellectual traditions in Asia which is much more accessible and from which they could probably learn a lot. They just don’t seem to think that there are intellectual traditions of the Left in Asian countries because they’re unaware of them.