| This dissertation examines the linked experiences of Japan, the Korean peninsula, and the U.S. during World War II and the Cold War. In particular, I argue that memories of the traumatic 20th century histories of the Asia Pacific continue to flare up in the 21st century due to their original unassimilability into official U.S. discourse. Because these Asian histories cannot be discussed without implicating the U.S. and calling into question its exceptional values, their recollection might be willfully avoided. I claim that a return to the traumatic histories of the Asia Pacific region - particularly to the colonial, neocolonial, and wartime periods of South Korea - generates productive disruptions on two levels. First, it challenges dominant understandings of the U.S. as a liberator of Asian nations and the U.S.'s discursive power in narrating their histories. Second, these traumatic histories also incite a reevaluation of Asian American identity formation, in that they represent for Asian immigrants and their descendants a melancholic past, which remains incompatible with the post-racial future of the U.S. nation. Under the model minority paradigm, Asians and Asian Americans are expected to heal from the hurts of their homelands and from any racial inflictions experienced in the domestic nation. However, I suggest that the U.S.'s capacity to rescue and rehabilitate both Asian nations and its immigrant populations is subversively challenged in my chosen texts: Alain Resnais and Marguerite Duras's Hiroshima Mon Amour, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's, Dictee, Chang-rae Lee's A Gesture Life, and Paul Yoon's Once the Shore. |
