After having been to a rather bizarre talk on the figuration of the Chinese (or the Mandarin) in Western modernist literature which ended with the speaker’s little spiel on the state of transnationalism in Asian American studies, I’m struck by how progressive scholars these days all alike seem to say that scholars in Asian American studies should not only work on Asian “American” texts, histories, and issues but also on “Asian” texts, histories, and issues. I understand that this exhortation is coming from a strong and considered critique of American exceptionalism, but I still find that nudge somewhat bewildering.
Mostly because I’m not sure why the onus is on scholars in Asian American studies to take up the study of Asia. I mean, sure, Asian American history intersects with the history of U.S. military interventions and commerce in Asia, and it makes a lot of sense to look at both China and Chinese America if you were working on the Chinese diaspora (like Ong did in one of her books). But I find something unsettling and uncomfortable about the argument that you need to read both Asian American texts and Asian texts to avoid your project being “too American.” Maybe I’m not getting this because I’m not American.
In addition to not being able to see how working on both Asian American texts and Asian texts alone makes your work less U.S.-centered, I’m also somewhat cautious of the sudden demand that scholars in Asian American studies avail themselves of Asian texts. For example, there is this passage in one of Sau-ling Wong’s essays where she discusses her experience in a graduate class. She had her graduate class read some Chinese writers. She thought they had to be read in the tradition of Chinese literary history and criticism. However, her graduate students (ain’t going to name names…) showed her how the Chinese writers can actually be read with some well-known Asian American writers. Wong ends the passage with a very generous reflection on the kinds of innovative readings that reading the Chinese writers through Asian American writers allow.
Which is all good and fine. I like such reading practices that create new rubrics of comparison. But then I can’t help but think of what would be “lost” if such readings ignore the place of the Chinese writer in Chinese history and the ways in which the writer has been discussed in Chinese literary criticism. I can’t help it if I sound a bit old fashioned here. Although I should make it clear that what concerns me is not so much what constitutes good scholarship as who gets to read which writers in what ways. And with what authority. Or maybe I’m just being finicky.
The speaker last night ended his little spiel on the sorry state of transnationalism on Asian American studies by pointing to the “language problem” of scholars in Asian American studies. They don’t have the languages to read Asian texts. (The speaker himself had spent some years in Beijing and seemed to speak Mandarin.) I understood what he was saying, but then really disagreed with his casting the lack of attention to Asian texts in Asian American studies as a “language problem.” While language can be one of the many reasons why Asian texts are never given the proper scholarly attention that is given to Western classics, it is by no means the most prominent reason. Rey Chow in one of her works mentions that the unequal relations of the East and West will only change when we read Asian literature with the same attention and interest we extend to Western literature. If Asian classics have the same place in modernity as Western classics do, then students would be clamoring to learn Asian languages. The problem is that’s not the case. Compared to Western literature, Asian literature is undervalued, and students and researchers go for the prestigious, well established fields within literary and cultural studies. Which is never East Asian studies. (Just think about the prestige of Shakespeare studies in English.)
Having said all this, I concur with the speaker that it’d be awesome if everybody in English had a language other than English. Like really had a language other than English. Instead of just doing enough to pass the required foreign language exam which is more or less a joke. And having laid out all my complaints about scholars in Asian American studies trying to make it into East Asian studies, I actually am very excited by works by scholars such as Viet Nguyen and Naoki Sakai who bring interesting and innovative insights into reading the literature of the Asian diaspora. I hope more solid scholarship in this area makes me realize how ungrounded and foolish my complaints and concerns are.
January 26, 2008 at 3:04 am
The specialist place that Asian studies occupies is really kind of whacked out. When I was in high school (a blue-collar public school) Asian history was barely touched. We spent two or three weeks covering the entirety of Asian history, of 7 semesters of required social studies.
Likewise, there were some non-English works read in translation in Language Arts, but they were exclusively Western. Wait, we read THE GOOD EARTH, a book about China written by a white person.
This was certainly something of a bias when I began studying literature at the university. There was a canon I was familiar with, and I was utterly without a clue when it came to Asian history and literary traditions.