The Subject(s) of Human Rights: Crises, Violations, and Asian/American Critique

263 Pages·2019·2.546 MB·English

by  Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Guy Beauregard, Hsiu-chuan Lee

The Subject(s) of Human Rights
In the series Asian American History and Culture, edited by Cathy J. Schlund-Vials,
Shelley Sang-Hee Lee, and Rick Bonus. Founding editor, Sucheng Chan; editors
emeriti, David Palumbo-Liu, Michael Omi, K. Scott Wong, and Linda Trinh Võ.
Also in this series:
Malini Johar Schueller, Campaigns of Knowledge: U.S. Pedagogies of Colonialism
and Occupation in the Philippines and Japan
Crystal Mun-hye Baik, Reencounters: On the Korean War and Diasporic Memory
Critique
Michael Omi, Dana Y. Nakano, and Jeffrey Yamashita, eds., Japanese American
Millennials: Rethinking Generation, Community, and Diversity
Masumi Izumi, The Rise and Fall of America’s Concentration Camp Law: Civil
Liberties Debates from the Internment to McCarthyism and the Radical 1960s
Shirley Jennifer Lim, Anna May Wong: Performing the Modern
Edward Tang, From Confinement to Containment: Japanese/American Arts during
the Early Cold War
Patricia P. Chu, Where I Have Never Been: Migration, Melancholia, and Memory in
Asian American Narratives of Return
Cynthia Wu, Sticky Rice: A Politics of Intraracial Desire
Marguerite Nguyen, America’s Vietnam: The Longue Durée of U.S. Literature and
Empire
Vanita Reddy, Fashioning Diaspora: Beauty, Femininity, and South Asian American
Culture
Audrey Wu Clark, The Asian American Avant-Garde: Universalist Aspirations in
Modernist Literature and Art
Eric Tang, Unsettled: Cambodian Refugees in the New York City Hyperghetto
Jeffrey Santa Ana, Racial Feelings: Asian America in a Capitalist Culture of Emotion
Jiemin Bao, Creating a Buddhist Community: A Thai Temple in Silicon Valley
Elda E. Tsou, Unquiet Tropes: Form, Race, and Asian American Literature
Tarry Hum, Making a Global Immigrant Neighborhood: Brooklyn’s Sunset Park
Ruth Mayer, Serial Fu Manchu: The Chinese Supervillain and the Spread of Yellow
Peril Ideology
Karen Kuo, East Is West and West Is East: Gender, Culture, and Interwar Encounters
between Asia and America
Kieu-Linh Caroline Valverde, Transnationalizing Viet Nam: Community, Culture,
and Politics in the Diaspora
Lan P. Duong, Treacherous Subjects: Gender, Culture, and Trans-Vietnamese Feminism
Kristi Brian, Reframing Transracial Adoption: Adopted Koreans, White Parents, and
the Politics of Kinship
Belinda Kong, Tiananmen Fictions outside the Square: The Chinese Literary Diaspora
and the Politics of Global Culture
Bindi V. Shah, Laotian Daughters: Working toward Community, Belonging, and
Environmental Justice
A list of additional titles in this series appears at the back of this book
Edited by
Cathy J. Schlund-Vials,
Guy Beauregard, and
Hsiu-chuan Lee
THE SUBJECT(S) OF
HUMAN RIGHTS
Crises, Violations, and
Asian/American Critique
With an Afterword by Madeleine Thien
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Philadelphia • Rome • Tokyo
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122
tupress.temple.edu
Copyright © 2020 by Temple University—Of The Commonwealth System
of Higher Education
All rights reserved
Published 2020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Schlund-Vials, Cathy J., 1974- editor. | Beauregard, Guy Pierre,
editor. | Lee, Hsiu-chuan, editor. | Thien, Madeleine, 1974- writer of
afterword.
Title: The subject(s) of human rights : crises, violations, and
Asian/American critique / edited by Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Guy
Beauregard, and Hsiu-chuan Lee ; with an afterword by Madeleine Thien.
Description: Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 2020. | Series: Asian
American history and culture | Includes bibliographical references and
index. | Summary: “This work takes seriously the ways in which Asian
American studies has from its founding engaged with humanitarian crises
and large-scale violations. Committed to extending this critical work
across local/global, domestic/international, and immigrant/refugee
frames, this collection relocates Asian America from the periphery to
the center of human rights critique”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019010532 (print) | LCCN 2019981205 (ebook) | ISBN
9781439915721 (cloth) | ISBN 9781439915738 (paperback) | ISBN
9781439915745 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Human rights—Asia. | Human rights—North America. |
Asians—Social conditions. | Asian Americans—Social conditions. | Human
rights in literature. | Asian Americans—Study and teaching. |
Asia—Relations—North America. | North America—Relations—Asia.
Classification: LCC JC599.A78 S93 2020 (print) | LCC JC599.A78 (ebook) |
DDC 323.1195/07—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019010532
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019981205
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National
Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z39.48-1992
Printed in the United States of America
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
I ntroduction: The Subject(s) of Human Rights; Recalibrating
Asian/American Critique | Guy Beauregard,
Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, and Hsiu-chuan Lee 1
PART I RECOLLECTING HUMAN RIGHTS
1 H uman Rights and South Korea: U.S. Imperialism,
State Ideologies, and Camptown Prostitution | Min-Jung Kim 21
2 After 1947: The Relative, the Refugee, and the Immigrant
in the Chinese Canadian Family Narrative | Christopher Lee 39
3 Th e Vancouver Asahi Connection: (Re-)engagement of the
Families of Returnees/Deportees in Japanese Canadian
History | Masumi Izumi 56
4 A Journey to Freedom: Human Rights Discourse and
Refugee Memory | Vinh Nguyen 74
PART II IMPOSSIBLE SUBJECTS: RACE, GENDER, AND LABOR
5 “ Every Bombed Village Is My Hometown”: James Baldwin’s
Engagement with the American War in Vietnam | Yin Wang 95
vi | Contents
6 M atronly Maids and Willful Women: Migrant Domestic
Workers in the Plural | Christopher B. Patterson 109
7 (De)humanizing Labor: Southeast Asian Migrant Narratives
in Taiwan | Grace Hui-chuan Wu 127
8 Factories, Farms, and Fisheries: Human Trafficking and Tethered
Subjectivities from Asia to the Pacific | Annie Isabel Fukushima 144
PART III READING AT THE LIMITS: THE AFTERMATHS,
AFTERLIVES, AND AESTHETICS OF HUMAN RIGHTS
9 R eframing Cambodia’s Killing Fields: The Commemorative
Limitations of Atrocity Tourism | Cathy J. Schlund-Vials 163
10 Reclaiming Home and “Righting” Citizenships in
Postwar Sri Lanka: Internal Displacement, Memory,
and Human Rights | Dinidu Karunanayake 180
11 Toward an Aesthetics and Erotics of Nonsovereign
Rights in Okinawa | Mayumo Inoue 201
12 Figuring North Korean Lives: Reading at the Limits
of Human Rights | Christine Kim 217
Afterword: The Act of Listening | Madeleine Thien 233
Contributors 241
Index 247
Acknowledgments
F
rom the beginning, Sara Cohen and Aaron Javsicas at Temple University
Press were amazingly supportive of The Subject(s) of Human Rights. Such
support, predicated on a truly capacious vision of how this collection
functioned as both conversation starter and field interrogator, was unwaver-
ing from proposal to final submission. This aspirational engagement with
collection topic and project focus was likewise reflected in all our inter-
actions with Ashley Petrucci, Gary Kramer, and other members of the Tem-
ple University Press team, including most recently Sarah Munroe, who has
maintained momentum and commitment. Admittedly, The Subject(s) of
Human Rights reflects the provocative suggestions put forth by the anony-
mous readers, who pushed us (as editors) and our contributors to clarify the
intellectual, academic, and activist stakes of such human rights inquiry and
critique. To that end, the contributors to this collection have very much been
part of this larger publishing journey; the originality of their ideas coupled
with the willingness to revise made this a joyous editing endeavor. Jamie
Armstrong, editorial project manager at Amnet Systems, deserves consider-
able praise for guiding the manuscript at a critical production stage. We are
also indebted to the unparalleled generosity of Dinh Q. Lê, whose “Burma,”
from the evocative Fragile Spring series, serves as the cover for this collection.
This collection is very much the culmination of a conversation that began
in Taiwan at the 2015 Summer Institute in Asian American Studies (SIAAS),
which was in major part funded by The Ministry of Science and Technology
in Taiwan (MOST 102-2420-H-009-004-MY3), National Taiwan Normal
University and the College of Liberal Arts at National Taiwan University.
viii | Acknowledgments
Accordingly, The Subject(s) of Human Rights is wonderfully beholden to
those who comprise the SIAAS collective: Guy Beauregard, Pin-chia Feng,
Shyh-jen Fuh, Hsiu-chuan Lee, and Andy Chih-ming Wang. As Guy Beau-
regard eloquently characterizes, this critical conversation would not have
happened without them; it would also not have occurred without the work
of SIAAS participants who, in substantive and substantial ways, helped re-
frame, rethink, and re-engage with many of the pressing issues addressed in
this collection. The Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan (MOST
104-2410-H-003-034-MY3 and MOST 107-2410-H-002-048-MY3), along
with the College of Liberal Arts at National Taiwan University, provided key
support to conceptualize, edit, and contribute to this collection and is grate-
fully acknowledged. The Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan
funded the three Summer Institutes in Asian American Studies (2013, 2014,
2015) that brought this collection “into being” and provided significant re-
search support. And, the Department of English at National Taiwan Normal
University provided integral organizing support for what served as the gen-
esis conference event for this collection.
Last, but certainly not least, the editors would like to acknowledge the
advice, support, and friendship of those who make doing this work worth-
while and such labor rewarding: Joan Chiung-Heui Chang, Iping Liang,
Ioana Luca, and Christopher Vials.
The Subject(s) of Human Rights