Narrating Race: Asia, (Trans)Nationalism, Social Change

291 Pages·2011·7.092 MB·English

by  Robbie B. H. Goh (editor)

T T
EX X E
T
Studies in Comparative Literature 64
Series Editors
C.C. Barfoot and Theo D’haen

Narrating Race
Asia, (Trans)Nationalism,
Social Change
Edited by Robbie B. H. Goh
Amsterdam - New York, NY
2011
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of
‘ISO 9706: 1994, Information and documentation - Paper for
documents - Requirements for permanence’.
ISBN: 978-90-420-3424-2
E-Book ISBN: 978-94-012-0708-9
© Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2011
Printed in The Netherlands
CONTENTS

Acknowledgements vii

1 Introduction: Writing Race and Asia-Pacific 1
Mobilities – Constructions and Contestations
ROBBIE B.H. GOH

2 Vivan Sundaram’s “Amrita”: Towards a Style 25
of the Body
TANIA ROY

3 The Return of the Scientist: Essential Knowledge 49
and Global Tribalism in Amitav Ghosh’s The
Hungry Tide and The Calcutta Chromosome
ROBBIE B.H. GOH

4 Ethnicity and the Southeast Asian Diaspora in 69
Li-Young Lee’s The Winged Seed
WALTER S.H. LIM

5 Narrating Race, Gender and Sexuality in R.K. 89
Narayan’s The Painter of Signs
CHITRA SANKARAN

6 Chinese Ethnicity in Post-Reformation Indonesian 109
Women’s Fiction: A Comparative Study of Two
Novels by Ayu Utami and Dewi Lestari
HARRY AVELING
7 Resi(g)nifying the Chinese and Filipino in Cinematic 127
Narratives
CAROLINE S. HAU

8 Performing Ethnicity, Ethnicizing History: The 145
Eurasians of Singapore in Rex Shelley’s The
Shrimp People
LILY ROSE TOPE

9 Performing the Self: Race and Identity in Two 163
Hong Kong English-Language Plays
KWOK-KAN TAM

10 Border Crossing: Place, Identity and Dis/Location of 181
the Self in Xu Xi’s The Unwalled City
TERRY SIU-HAN YIP

11 Hybrid Brown Gaijin Is a “Distinguished Alien” 199
in Sakoku Japan
JULIE MEHTA

12 Ugly Americans and Little Brown Brothers: 217
Spectacles of Identity in Contemporary
Philippine Drama
JUDY CELINE ICK

13 Disappearing Race: Normative Whiteness and 235
Cultural Appropriation in Australian Refugee
Narratives
WENCHE OMMUNDSEN

14 Race in Asian Poetry in English: Ethnic, 253
National and Cosmopolitan Representations
AGNES S.L. LAM

Notes on Contributors 273

Index 277
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This volume arose out of a conference entitled “Narrating Race
Between Nationalisms and Globalization” hosted by the Department
of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore
in Singapore in July 2006, in which Emeritus Professor Edwin
Thumboo played a key role in conceptualizing the theme, co-
organizing the conference, and giving a thought-provoking paper.
Funding for the conference and for the editorial work on this
publication came from a research grant from the National University
of Singapore (N-103-000-017-021). The Centre for the Arts, and
especially its Director Ms Christine Khor, contributed financial and
logistical support.
The administrative and technical staff of the Department of English
Language and Literature (especially Angeline Ang, Junie Yeo, Sunadi
Ali, and Cindy Lim) played a large part in ensuring the success and
smooth running of the conference. Ms Nadine Chan worked diligently
on the copyediting of the early draft of this volume. Ms Elizabeth
Wijaya later took on the role of editorial assistant for this volume, and
greatly compensated for my technical deficiencies.
As is often the case with conferences and their resulting volumes,
only a portion of the papers presented could be fitted in or were
available for inclusion in this volume. Nevertheless the volume
benefitted from the ideas and discussion generated by all the
participants in that conference.
The patience and faith shown by the contributors to this volume,
over the unusually long period of time it has taken for the volume to
find a suitable home and finally appear in print, is greatly appreciated
and testimony to strong collegial relations. In the production process
itself, the firm editorial hand and meticulous attention of series editor
Cedric Barfoot steered the book through many potential disasters. I
am also grateful to Esther Roth at Rodopi for her constant support and
guidance.
For Tania Roy’s article, we would like to thank Vivan Sundaram
for permission to extrapolate and publish details of the series, Retake
viii(cid:3) (cid:3) (cid:3) Narrating Race
of Amrita (2001), and for generously contributing images toward this
publication.
An earlier and different version of Caroline Hau’s article appeared
in the journal Philippine Studies, LIII/4 (2005), 491-531.
Research for Wenche Ommundsen’s article “Disappearing Race”
was funded by a Discovery Grant from the Australian Research
Council. The author would like to acknowledge the support of the
ARC, as well as the input of her co-researchers Professor Clare
Bradford and Dr Debra Dudek.
Finally and most importantly, I thank my Lord, the “Author and
Finisher of my faith”, for His constant love and care for me in
everything that I do.
INTRODUCTION: WRITING RACE AND ASIA-PACIFIC
MOBILITIES – CONSTRUCTIONS AND CONTESTATIONS

ROBBIE B.H. GOH

The cultural politics of race and ethnicity
The issue of race simply will not go away, nor will it be quiescent
within the seemingly open and fluid opportunities for the movement
of peoples and communications across boundaries that the era of
globalization seems to promise. The 1950 UNESCO conference on race
famously declared that the replacement of “race” by the term and
category of “ethnic group” signalled a move away from entrenched
taxonomies seemingly tied to the inescapable facts of biology, towards
an understanding of difference in which culture played a determining
role.1 The implication was that ethnicity gave individuals a degree of
choice, the possibility of enhancing or emphasizing certain affiliations
while downplaying others, through the cultural mechanisms of
language, dress, cuisine, mannerisms and the like. “Race” – the older
category which entered modernity through the European nationalistic
projects of the nineteenth century and later projects, and (at least from
our more consciously pluralistic and transnational present) brings with
it the baggage of unificatory politics and ideology – seemed to allow
little possibility for the cultural negotiations of racial identities. Yet
what we are seeing in an age of global communications and the
movement of peoples is precisely that racial boundaries, displaced
from the sphere of overt public discourse and policies, return with
greater force in the politics of cultural expression and everyday
practice.

1 Cited in Robert J.C. Young, “Ethnicity as Otherness in British Identity Politics”, in
Beyond Dichotomies: Histories, Identities, Cultures and the Challenges of
Globalization, ed. Elizabeth Mudumbe-Boyi, Albany: State University of New York
Press, 2002, 154.
2 Robbie B.H. Goh

An extreme consciousness of race and racial differences – as
incontrovertible and immutable facts that need somehow to be
overcome or unwritten – runs through most of the foundational ideas
of “modern rationality” and of notions of the modern, integrated
nation.2 The racist histories of Europe and North America and
consequences are clear, from the horrors of Dachau and Auschwitz to
the internment of Japanese settlers in America during World War II,
from violence involving Asian and Middle-Eastern immigrants in
England, France, Germany and elsewhere, to the targeting of black
men for police harassment and violence in America, and many other
such events.3 Global terrorism after 9/11 has intensified the suspicion
of and hostility and violence towards men especially who appear to be
of Middle Eastern origin, and racial profiling of various other risk
categories is clearly practised by the US Homeland Security and other
security forces. Apart from these more prominent and occasionally
spectacular phenomena of racist consciousness and violence, there are
the innumerable acts of marginalization, stereotyping, verbal violence,
and economic privation and exploitation carried out every day on the
basis of perceived racial-cultural differences. Insidiously, too, the
manifestation of race consciousness in some social contexts consists
in the very denial of racial difference (and thus of the possibilities of
negotiating liberating racial pluralisms) as reflections of ideologies
such as adamant integrationism or Zionism, effectively creating racial
gag orders that do not in any way defuse racial tensions in society.4
In most if not all of these conflicts, the occasions for violence are
complex, derived as much from historical grievances, socio-economic
disparities and political threats, as from racial factors. Race – the
biological markers (skin colour, body types, hair, facial features and
the like) which are manifested in individual appearances – and cultural
markers such as religion, language, ecology, and customs, become
inextricably intertwined within the politics of racial conflict and

2 Gary Peller, “Race Consciousness”, in After Identity: A Reader in Law and Culture,
eds Dan Danielsen and Karen Engle, New York: Routledge, 1995, 67-68; and Richard
H. King, “Modernity and Racism”, in Writing and Race, ed. Tim Youngs, London:
Longman, 1997, 275.
3 Dianne M. Pinderhughes, “Race and Ethnicity in the City”, in Handbook of
Research on Urban Politics and Policy in the U.S., ed. Ronald K. Vogel, Westport,
Conn: Greenwood Press, 1997, 75-76.
4 Peller, “Race Consciousness”, 67-69; and Jay Bookman, “Anti-Semitism Label
Confines Debate in U.S.”, in The Straits Times, 20 December 2006, 26.