A Cartography of Asian American Studies: Reconsidering Transnational Imaginaries in Asian American Studies

Abstract

This paper examines how one can come to terms with a transnational imperative by Asian American studies and delineate an as-yet-unshaped face of the field by reconsidering the vexing tug-of- war between Asian American studies' turn toward transnationalism and its misgivings about “denationalizing" tendencies of transnationalism. Such a stalemate is both symptomatic and determining of a disciplinary unconscious of Asian American studies in its transnational framing since its intrinsic lack of self-reflexivity in problematizing its authority as a producer and purveyor of knowledge paradoxically buttresses the institutional growth of the field and the establishment of its practitioners. If Asian American studies, while hailing the “Asian" in its transnational framing within the context of trans-Pacific imaginaries, chooses to continue to speak on behalf of powerlessness from a relative position of power and authority, there is a discrepancy between what Asian Americanists claim to do and what they actually perform in conceiving of a transnational Asian American studies. In addition, Asian American studies, vis--vis the U.S. dominant culture, cannot but replicate a contemporary transnational dynamic of (re)positioning of the United States as a central locus of representation and work to consolidate the borders and contours of the “Asian American" as an uncritically “American" identification. As a result, Asian American studies runs risk of enriching the mythic expansiveness of America rather than delinking itself from the American national framework. With in mind the questions of whose transnationalism is called forth, and who the addressor and the implicit addressee are, this paper seeks to explore how Asian American studies can speak for the “Asian" from a subject position not recognized as authoritative, and how the “Asian" and the “Asian American" can recognize the reciprocity of each other's gaze without redeeming each side's narcissistic gestures in the name of broadening the field beyond the confines and constraints of region and nation. I finally advance the argument that the current phenomenon of transnationalization driven by Asian American studies be articulated through and against the “Asian," thereby explicating what is at stake and what is gained in maintaining or critiquing the distinctions between the Asian and the “Asian American" that are forged in and through interactions, engagements, and conflicts.