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Editor's Introduction

Editor's Introduction vi Place and body. Time and action.” Where Sheng-mei Ma just assumes the relation of literature and psyche, Yukiko Hanawa’s essay “inciting sites of political interventions: queer ’n’ asian” passes over the horizon of personhood to political community. Her question, “Who and what is an Asian American queer?” is both blunter and ultimately more difficult to answer. Asian American queer is a place under construction, locatable only with reference to its own history. “History” is for Hanawa a precious and useful element when construed in terms “of political relationality” rather than as simply “evidence for identity politics,” no matter how necessary the latter may prove to be in practice. Political scholarship, then, cannot rest merely with visibility. It cannot not be that, since visibility is the ground of ethics and politics. Hanawa’s potent evocation of the practice of history-making speaks to the power of readable historical evidence and to the projects of interpretation. With these comes, as she points out, the “moment of productive contradiction that allows us to imagine how we might become.” Willing to engage in historical interpretation and mindful of the goal of a skeptical community, Hanawa retells certain stories of desire-of Masuda Fumiko for http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png positions asia critique Duke University Press

Editor's Introduction

Barlow, Tani E.
positions asia critique , Volume 4 (3) – Dec 1, 1996
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 1996 by Duke University Press
ISSN
1067-9847
eISSN
1527-8271
DOI
10.1215/10679847-4-3-v
Publisher site
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Abstract

vi Place and body. Time and action.” Where Sheng-mei Ma just assumes the relation of literature and psyche, Yukiko Hanawa’s essay “inciting sites of political interventions: queer ’n’ asian” passes over the horizon of personhood to political community. Her question, “Who and what is an Asian American queer?” is both blunter and ultimately more difficult to answer. Asian American queer is a place under construction, locatable only with reference to its own history. “History” is for Hanawa a precious and useful element when construed in terms “of political relationality” rather than as simply “evidence for identity politics,” no matter how necessary the latter may prove to be in practice. Political scholarship, then, cannot rest merely with visibility. It cannot not be that, since visibility is the ground of ethics and politics. Hanawa’s potent evocation of the practice of history-making speaks to the power of readable historical evidence and to the projects of interpretation. With these comes, as she points out, the “moment of productive contradiction that allows us to imagine how we might become.” Willing to engage in historical interpretation and mindful of the goal of a skeptical community, Hanawa retells certain stories of desire-of Masuda Fumiko for

Journal

positions asia critique – Duke University Press

Published: Dec 1, 1996

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