| What does it mean to speak of globalization in the context of Asian American cultural production? As a population formed out of the international expansion of the American economy in the 19th century, Asian Americans are peculiarly situated to register changes in the political economy of American society as these are tied to the transformations of the global system. Given the complex entanglements that characterize the relation of the local to the global, this dissertation explores the linkages between the national and the transnational by analyzing the ways in which works of Asian American culture attempt to represent the imagined community of Asian America in terms of both the US racial formation and international relations between the US and Asia. The potentiality of this project depends upon its capacity to grasp the new formations of race, class, and gender produced by globalization in both American national and Asian transnational contexts. All of the texts considered here locate themselves in both the global and national arenas, and thus participate in the growing tendency towards imagining diasporic or transnational communities. A detailed reading of these texts, however, reveals the persistent structural centrality of a national or local problematic within the transnational narratives. The "transnationalization" of Asian American culture must be seen, therefore, to exceed the simple broadening of cultural or ethnic identities beyond national boundaries; rather, it is a necessary response to the transformations of national societies. Comprehending these changes requires the articulation of the contradictions of race, gender, and sexuality with capitalism in global rather than national terms. Consequently, the dissertation focuses on the transnational moments and movements of Asian American culture as sites of contestation that attempt simultaneously to rewrite the nation while also confronting the operations of global capital. It is the complications of articulating these two projects in the contradictions of the national and the international that the dissertation aims to elaborate and clarify in its analyses of culture and identity. Works discussed include: Peter Wang, A Great Wall; Lydia Minatoya, Talking to High Monks in the Snow; David Mura, Turning Japanese; David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly; Ang Lee, The Wedding Banquet; Jessica Hagedorn Dogeaters. |
