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On the Edge of Empires: Flexible Citizenship among Chinese in Diaspora

On the Edge of Empires: Flexible Citizenship among Chinese in Diaspora pos;t;onr 13 0 1993by Duke University Press. : Winter 1993 Orientalism as a knowledge/power system (Foucault 1991).Orientalism has proliferated into many complex discourses that shape the conditions of existence and possibilities for Asian subjects, both in their homelands and abroad. In this era of Pacific Rim affluence, I argue that what might be called the grand Orientalist discourses, those which reached supreme authority under the British empire, are still effective if not inseparable from late-capitalist Asian development. Grand Orientalist discourses are dialectically linked to an alternative terrain of petty Orientalisms that are generated in the transnational contexts of corporate and media circulation and that rework Anglo-European academic concepts into confident pronouncements about Oriental labor, skills, deference, and mystery. In contrast to Said’s (1978) assumption that the objects of Orientalisms cannot respond, this essay argues that Asian subjects selectively participate in Orientalist formulations as they negotiate shifting discursive terrains in the world economy. Such discursive interventions disturb the dissemination of knowledges in the West, and represent a strategy of power that cannot be reduced to a reproduction of the subjects themselves as Orientalists. In non-Western circuits of economy and power, they intervene in other cultural productions of Chinese identity http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png positions asia critique Duke University Press

On the Edge of Empires: Flexible Citizenship among Chinese in Diaspora

Ong, Aihwa
positions asia critique , Volume 1 (3) – Dec 1, 1993
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 1993 by Duke University Press
ISSN
1067-9847
eISSN
1527-8271
DOI
10.1215/10679847-1-3-745
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

pos;t;onr 13 0 1993by Duke University Press. : Winter 1993 Orientalism as a knowledge/power system (Foucault 1991).Orientalism has proliferated into many complex discourses that shape the conditions of existence and possibilities for Asian subjects, both in their homelands and abroad. In this era of Pacific Rim affluence, I argue that what might be called the grand Orientalist discourses, those which reached supreme authority under the British empire, are still effective if not inseparable from late-capitalist Asian development. Grand Orientalist discourses are dialectically linked to an alternative terrain of petty Orientalisms that are generated in the transnational contexts of corporate and media circulation and that rework Anglo-European academic concepts into confident pronouncements about Oriental labor, skills, deference, and mystery. In contrast to Said’s (1978) assumption that the objects of Orientalisms cannot respond, this essay argues that Asian subjects selectively participate in Orientalist formulations as they negotiate shifting discursive terrains in the world economy. Such discursive interventions disturb the dissemination of knowledges in the West, and represent a strategy of power that cannot be reduced to a reproduction of the subjects themselves as Orientalists. In non-Western circuits of economy and power, they intervene in other cultural productions of Chinese identity

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positions asia critique – Duke University Press

Published: Dec 1, 1993

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