Black Repetition and the problem of Temporality in the Racialized Other

1. I find the notion of a “metonymy of presence”, as discussed in "Mimicry and Men", in regards to the mimicking colonial subject to be really fascinating. The notion of an “almost the same but not white” as being the difference between the colonizer (the English) and the colonial subject (the Anglicized) seems paradoxical in its affirmation of colonial power. Within a colonial to colonized dynamic there is always a perpetuated possibility of a cultural change through the erasure of cultural values and the replacement of colonial/western ideals. This trajectory of becoming civilized seems to contradict this ‘double vision’ of the colonized-colonizer (‘The partial gaze’, the simultaneous pull and denial that places the ‘anglegized’ in the interval between subject and object) in that by deferring the possibility of becoming English as something ontologically salient and labeling narratives of colonial power are undermined.

2.

In Race and Technology, Coleman posits black repetition as a sign of pure embodiment and rendering of difference—it differs from itself with no other meaning than this differing. Which I think speaks to Fanon’s statement in the In The Lived Experience of the Black Man, that “The black man has no ontological resistance”: the racialized subject has no substance outside of its juxtaposition to whiteness. I’m wondering how black repetitions fits into other notions of the temporality of racialized subjects that we have discussed in class: Fanon’s closed circuit of colonial memory and the black subjects slavery to the immediate in regards to photographic technology.

are all imagined hammers equally light?

Coleman's piece pushed me further toward a tension I've been grappling with in this course. There is a part of me that wishes to confidently step forward and say all of the following: Yes, endorse all structures of limitation as mediums! Produce for the delight of producing. Play. Own the performative and engage agency of identity, problematic and retroactively-constituted as all that may be. Traverse the fantasy of your symptom, observe ideology, and then enjoy it anyway.

Yet, I'm left with another unsettled voice. Am I not in a position of tremendous privilege, and how am I to express this? Is it not a call to action? Who am I to call anyone to action but myself? In my life, the bulk of my entanglement has been with Ideological State Apparatuses, and at that register, perhaps I have such confidence. But what of human beings with identities that are regularly entangled with Repressive State Apparatuses?

Coleman says "the prosthetic logic of human identity bears on questions of race — rendering race a technology — then the historical weight of racism may be transmutated into a lightness (or speed) of being" (184). Is this a uniform lightness? If race is an imagined hammer, does everyone's hammer weigh the same amount? (And, of course, even by asking that, I'm (re)constituting someone's closed loop of racial identity)

In her example of Obama, she gives hint of the difficulty of these questions: "Does race as a technology mean that Obama, by pulling this magic lever, was not perceived as a black person by his audience? No; it means that there was no prejudgment, or at least much less prejudgment, of what it is to perceive a black person" (189). In saying "at least much less prejudgment," she addresses the theory-and-practice space I am grappling with.

I read Coleman as another thinker articulating strategies for motion as a kind of justice. "The subject, in such a case, is mobile, rather than moored to the historical valuation of race as it has been sutured to the biological" (184). One's race becomes a medium for navigating motion. I support this, but have conflicts about the best role in endorsing this strategy. The practical answer might've come last class, in the eloquent call to be "responsible with the stories you tell." Am I capable of that level of responsibility when it comes to staging representation of race? Of this I am still unsure.

camouflage

In Coleman's discussion of The Battle of Algiers, she discusses the tactical passing of Algerian woman in their infiltration of enemy space. Their ability to become invisible, to become illegible to cultural standards, works as a threat to the perceived truth of visuality:

"By blending in and disappearing, the women become lethal figures, focusing in on their targets — with their own countercolonial gaze as it were — and destroying the space. The women appear to be participating in the dominant culture even as they are sent to chip away at it and to help create the psychological conditions of terror…They invisibly infiltrate the enemy—an infiltration that is the stuff of nightmares on both sides of the line. This particular brand of subterfuge, where one passes for the enemy, breeds an extremely treacherous form of simulation. The subject demonstrates a mobility that makes every- one uncomfortable…Yet she has already disrupted borders of identity and power relations in making the cross from colonized subject to agitator. When she goes back to her “proper place,” she returns transformed” (197-8).

I find Fanon's writing on the use of strategies of concealment and trickery, the use of hidden transcripts, on the part of the colonized equally as appealing, particularly his discussion of the veil as a symbol of armor, self-possession, and camouflage:

"The Algerian woman moves like a fish in Western waters…no one suspects that her suitcases contain the automatic pistol…" (58).

Also, in speaking of the Algerian woman's place in the home...
"The Algerian woman, in imposing such a restriction on herself, in choosing a form of existence limited in scope, was deepening her consciousness of struggle and preparing for combat" (66)...

Externality

How does externality play into how race is used as a technology, and how does the gaze of the outsider contrast and attack the views of the insider?

In “Algeria Unveiled”, I found the introduction of the tourist very interesting, as we are all cultural tourists in one way or another. What I was really interested in was the statement “belonging to a given cultural group is usually revealed by clothing traditions…[as is the case with] the veil worn by [Muslim] women [that] is at once noticed by the tourist” (35.) By thinking of clothing as a race we must also thing about the increased externality that clothing adds to our appearance. While the traditions or the religion (a type of “race”) of Muslim men may not be realized at first, as they are free to wear street clothes, that of Muslim women are, as they are immediately identified by their clothing. By covering up most of their physical racial identifiers, they are completely nude in the sense that their external religio-cultural identifiers are showing. To the tourist, they are easily identifiable; however, for the men, passing is much easier.

Since a large percentage of Muslim women wear the veils, it allows for representation of that cultural group without concrete knowledge, often leading to misrepresentation. As Bhaba states in “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse”, “the menace of mimicry is its double vision…that is a result of…partial representation/recognition” (88.) The tourist may try to represent and/or mimic these different cultures – not just Muslim cultures – and can create “the most terrifying thing to behold” (Bhaba 90) due to the fact that “what arises from…exterior forms” (Bhaba 90) may lead to a false representation, however valid it is on the outside. Either “reality [is taken] into consideration…[or] ‘reality’ [is disavowed and replaced by] mimicry…in [the form of] racist stereotypes, statements, jokes, [or] myths” (Bhaba 91) which are taken as truth all because of the idea of the external. In the current age of technology, what isn’t external? Everything can be accessed by whoever has the capabilities or just the determined drive to access it. We (mis)represent people we know, people we think we know, people we want to know and even people we don’t know. How does technology affirm these ideas of representation, and how is the external re- and mis-appropriated by the tourist?

Illusionary race

As explicitly articulated by himself, Obama is a son of a Kenyan man and a Caucasian American woman. Obama might disdain me as one of the people who label him as "too black" or "not black enough," but the matter of fact is that he is white just as much as he is black. Within himself Obama bears experiences and identities of both races. He is a member of black community and a black church-goer. At the same time he grew up with his white grandmother and (although he does not really highlight this fact anywhere in his speech) he enjoyed the highest educational privilege in the predominantly WASP setting. Although the dual experiences co-exist within himself, continuously interact and impact each other, Obama presents as if he constantly oscillates between two opposite, conflicting identities.

I believe that Obama can rather be the very illustration that race is nothing but an illusion. He is a son of a Kenyan man and a Caucasian American -- nothing less, nothing more. None of the conventional racial categories in American society can precisely describe his racial identity. He is the very emblem of blurring racial borderline. Yet Obama chooses to bring in two of existing racial categories to inadequately divide up his identity. By doing so, he resonates with the people of both categories (or people who identify themselves with the categories): on one hand we have people sharing "a legacy of black American anger," and on the other hand we have those suffering from "white working-class anxiety" (Coleman, 188). In this way he successfully employs race as technology to bestow himself with "full arsenal of political ability" (Coleman, 188).

Coleman would argue that Obama made a smart, strategic choice to use race like a tool, like a cane for a blind person. But I do not think his approach to engage the rhetoric of race was the best in addressing the "monumental problems" he brings up in his speech. Many of the problems 21st century America faces did start as the "problem of color line" (to quote Mr. DuBois). However, majority of those problems -- i.e. inherited poverty, educational stratification, and so on -- now self-regenerate themselves beyond the realm of racism. Race now function not as the root cause of such problems, but rather as a stigma against others/from within (in a sense of self-fulfilling prophecy) that reinforces the repeated regression. For America to really face the "monumental problems," Americans need to train themselves to see the root cause beyond the memories of racial division that revisit us like a haunting ghost. In order to do so, it is important to realize that racial distinctions might not be real existence -- that it might be (and I believe it is) a socially constructed illusion. And at this point I'd like to question Coleman -- how can we really perceive race as socially constructed if we keep employing race as tool, race as real existence?

For a blind person, an optometric clinical trial would be a much more effective, fundamental solution than a cane in the long-run.

Violence, Veiling, Unveiling.

From his experience in Algeria, Fanon claimed to be awakened and aware of the oppressive nature of colonialism and the Algerian struggle to resist French colonial rule. Strongly sympathizing towards those who choose to resist and rebel against French control, Fanon’s work, "The Wretched of the Earth" and "Algeria Unveiled" are forthcoming as anti-colonial texts that illustrate the prevalent desire of one who is oppressed in a colonized environment, to be “freed” and to achieve freedom through violence and/or "unveiling". While I can understand certain critiques claiming Fanon's texts/texts are "taxonimizing" the role of the veil for Algerian woman as "emulous", I think it is important to look at Fanon's work as one that is in support of questioning dominant ideals and of the revolutionary, rather then in defense of colonization and control. He states in the Wretched of the Earth, “‘The colonized man liberates himself in and through violence. This praxis enlightens the militant because it shows him the means and the end,’” exemplifying the reality that those who are colonized are therefore subconsciously or consciously viewed as primitive by the colonizer and must consequently retaliate in a "primal"/violent way. Similarly in "Algeria Unveiled," I believe that Fanon is trying to emphasize "unveiling" as a tactic that could be used by Algerian women to "revolutionize," and retaliate against the oppression of colonization that has been re-appropriated in many different forms. While I am not necessarily making claim to agreeing with his point entirely, I do believe it is incredibly interesting and thought-provoking. Should violence and/or unveiling be advocated as a tactic to conduct social change, or more-so as a means to illuminate the wider implications of a historical conflict of those who are oppressed by colonization? Can those who are colonized achieve independence and/or freedom without being violent or needing to "unveil"?

post-racial society or(?) liberation, and heads up in space (like mars and the moon and stuff)

A central element of Coleman’s argument is that race can be (and is) used to do any number of things by any number of different actors. She holds up the example of Obama’s articulation of a new American ‘bi-racial’ political subject as a model for the American body-politic, and closes with Snead’s apocalyptic white-america-needs-black-america-as-its-foil vision. Coleman’s discussion is based largely in theoretical and philosophical texts and in literature; likewise her discussion of Obama centers around his mobilization of narratives and tropes.
Fanon, on the other hand, is focused on Algerian national liberation from French colonial power. The veil can be (and is) used to do different things by different actors, but all of these functions fall along the line of colonized vs. colonizer. Fanon, like the women insurgents carrying out bomb strikes with no insurgent ‘character’ to re-enact, is grounded only in the specific circumstances of the situation of the Algerian colony at that time. He discusses only the facts on the ground and the dreams and mindset of Algerian and French subjects in a way that is only one step removed from the facts on the ground.
How are these two differences between the two authors - what I will call multiculturalism vs. liberation and theoretical rootedness vs. real rootedness - related? I think these oppositions need to be complicated and nuanced connections across each opposition and between the two need to be teased out.

technology as a social construct?

I really enjoyed Coleman's interpretation of race as technology. I think it helps us get out of the anxiety and frustration regarding the status of race, especially in an openly multicultural society like the the one the structures of power in the US say we have. And I bring up the following point in hopes we can work through it because I do think race as technology is a revolutionary way to frame race in many respects, but how is this formulation of race as technology different from the "social construction" arguments? In what ways are tools/technology not a literal "construction" of society and its people.

Furthermore, I think we should talk about the postscript. It was a lot to think about and the idea of process is very intriguing, especially since Coleman in large ignores temporality and the Grand Narrative brought up by Snead.

the changing faces of resistence

According to Fanon, wearing the faik to veil one’s body, while originally an organic part of the culture of the colonized, is understood by the colonists as an essential trait of Algerian women. He then discusses the choices of veiling or unveiling one’s body as different ways or resistance, or rejection of the inserted values of the colonists, revealing the Western understanding of Algerian woman as the veiled mystery to be indeed constrained perceptions that can only see her as the stereotypical and imagined other. Women that resist the colonialists by strengthening their conformity to traditional behavior do so as a kind of antagonistic reaction against the colonialists’ violent penetration into the colonialized culture, but are in turn caught by the negative effects of doing so – the confinement of her body, loss of ease and assurance. The “revolutionary woman” who unveils herself to take on tasks for the Front overcomes her previously-cultivated timidity – “the shoulders of the unveiled Algerian woman are thrust back with easy freedom. She walks with a graceful. measured stride, neither too fast nor too slow” (51). If she can be seen to have achieved freedom here, it is because she is part of the self-librating revolution, rather than because she has confirmed to the Western appeal to have her unveil herself. And then wearing the faik is also taken as a tactic when it enables one to transport weapons. Fanon’s analysis breaks down the essentialist idea of the veiled Algerian woman, demonstrating how the colonialized is created by the colonialist as the former also create themselves as they react to violence done by the latter.

Bodies Unveiled

During the 2008 Presidential elections, Barack Obama’s campaign was on multiple platforms which spoke to specific positions of American polity, social life, and economic disparities. In particular, Obama’s campaign operated on race, transforming it into a “levered mechanism” that would refrain from framing race essentially, but use it in other productive ways. So, this levered mechanism was deployed to resist essentialization, and to refigure race into new identities that could be formed by Obama and conceptions of him in the media, whether it be images or his performative speeches and appearances. And it would be race that was at the heart of this campaign: “When the public sees him, they see a Black man.” Perhaps this was a moment of explosion, or, better put, a rupture in the human sensory motor apparatus? An explosion that would dissolve colonial conceived images of the colonized, i.e., the Black imago, Black slaves and Negroes? Perhaps intentionally remaining silent, i.e., The Bluest Eye, or using the body as the site of resistance, i.e., Algeria Unveiled and the Algerian women who hid their weapons against the Colonizers, could be considered strategies of agentive resistance may have manifested, but, as the readings of Obama’s campaign made clear, we may also come to recognize that the most effective agency is an unconscious one.

Coleman's Politics, and her Prosthetics

I am fascinated by the way Beth Coleman restates the concept race is an outward expression of the self, turning this statement on its head and pointing it towards an entirely different end—yes, race is an outward expression of the self, but precisely in the sense of a deliberate extension, “not a trait but a tool” (184).

Maybe it’s because the precise way she uses terminology is a bit new to me and to our discussion of race/technology as a class, but some of Coleman’s rhetoric seemed to slide into ambiguous phrasing, evoking other ideological constructions of the US in a way that felt problematic to me. Coleman characterizes race as enabling a state of “mobility…not without its risks,” pointing out that “being in flux can be much riskier than ‘knowing one’s place, even if that place represents the lowest level of society,” (184). To me, this characterization of the way race as a technology both enables and destabilizes one’s position in society reflected a tired, quintessentially (conservative) American justification for a faulty capitalist system, a position often invoked specially to discount the ethical imperative to aid poor and minority citizens. Coleman calls for us to “act courageously when faced with oppression—our own or somebody else’s,” (181). In light of such a basic ethical call to responsibility, one which I would say the US government already claims to heed, Coleman’s formulation of the inherent “riskiness” to the “fluidity” of race (and subject positioning) seems to me to be an invocation of the classic catch on the other side of the capitalist’s coin.

I’m also interested in what Fanon would say about Coleman’s characterization of race as a “prosthesis,” and her repeated use of the blind man’s cane as an example of the way race is used as a tool, considering Fanon’s anecdote in which he vehemently refuses to claim his blackness in the same way as the cripple does his injury (194). Coleman’s “prosthesis” to me seems to be in direct conversation with Fanon’s anecdote; instead of the amputee’s stump, should we claim the peg-leg as akin to blackness? Does Coleman tacitly accept blackness (not just race in general) as an amputation in some way? I don't really think so--it is clear from Coleman's argument that we are instead meant to think through the human as more "supplemental" than we ever originally thought--"amputating" not just the black but the category of the whole human altogether. (Where does “self” begin and end in this formulation?) Still, I think the echo of Fanon's terminology in Coleman's engagement with ideas of "prosthesis" has a powerful resonance.

Also, check out this artist, Nikki S. Lee. She's a Korean-born photographer who "passes" herself off and poses herself in staged scenes as different ethnic and sociopolitical identities (a la Cindy Sherman), pretty cool/relevant I would say.

The Way People Clothe Themselves

I found franz fanon's account of the matrices of fetishization of the veil to be pretty fascinating. “In a confused way, the European experiences his relation with the Algerian woman at a highly complex level. There is in it the will to bring this woman within his reach, to make her a possible object of possession. This woman who sees without being seen frustrates the colonizer. There is no reciprocity.” (44) Fanon goes on to describe the different reactions of European women to the Algerian practice of wearing a veil – that, indeed, it was no more mysterious than their own practices of wearing makeup as it sought to hide imperfections. It was but another way of dealing with the male's gaze.

But for the male colonist, the issue is not uncomplicated. The veil poses a challenging role. It is the very thing which makes the Algerian woman enchanting for the white colonist through the enticing pull of the uncertain – a very simple device and plainly a device at that. The white colonist comes to see the veiled woman as a goddess. Where he cannot see a face he allows his most thorough fantasies to rest there, beneath the veil.

I'm interested in the extent to which this fetishized otherness – racial otherness, here represented via clothing customs rather than skin tone or facial structure – plays an essential role in the very creation of races. Coco Fusco discusses the importance of early photographic accounts of racial others and the inevitable fetishization that occurred. We've seen the continual skewed differentiation in popular advertising media. How much of this is the result of fetish? One could even consider this from a semiological standpoint – that races, like words, can only have meaning when they are set in opposition to other races. Signs gain meaning through a matrix of differentiation; and thus do races gain meaning only through interaction (and fetishization) with other races.

Race as temporality / journey

Obama's speech and Coleman's essay both (intentionally or unintentionally?) revealed rhetoric of race as temporality. This makes me think of embodied cognition — the idea that we understand abstract concepts through physical, grounded metaphors, such as the passage of time as a journey. I'm wondering if race is another way of creating a concrete image of time and therefore a part of the journey metaphor. Obama revealed a conception of race as temporal and a journey with phrases like "we all want to move in the same direction" and "move beyond some of our old racial wounds." The progression of Obama functions as a metonymy for the progression of blacks, which in turn metonymizes the progress of the country; "the historical weight of racism may be transmuted into a lightness (or speed) of being" (Coleman 184).

Similarly, Coleman discusses race as "a trapdoor through which one can scoot off to greener pastures." A door is created in order to pass through it. Is race something that exists so that one day we can travel beyond it? Have oppressed races, in the American imagination, come to embody the past mistakes which, like race, are "not even past" (Obama claims)? Does the end of their oppression, or the end of colonial time, signify a landmark at which the past is finally past? It is impossible to live in an absolute progressive society because one day the now-progressive ideologies will be antiquated, unless change stops. Is the fixation on moving past race a way of disguising this problem, or of creating a time when no more changes are needed, when the union is "perfect"?

In addition to racial oppression as a symbol of the past, the idea of "primitive races" also seems to function that way. The evolution of society is described as a journey as well; "civilized" people can look at "primitive" people and say "we're past that juncture." In the theory of evolution, this journey starts in Africa and "progresses" through Asia and to Europe; is this narrative part of the metaphor of race as a journey? Or is the future a return to the past, to "nature"? Paradoxically, Coleman says that Kant "uses a native to point us toward the denatured creatures we must become” (182).

Which "trapdoor" is "all that is necessary"?

Coleman encompasses much of what we have already discussed. For me, treating race as a technology leads powerfully toward the possibility of real social action, but it does so in part because it organically interrogates race as part of a wide system of causes and effects that are not necessarily raciological. Race as technology draws together race, class, gender, science, media and other seemingly disparate systems into a single understanding of the technology of the modern world.

The central contention for Coleman seems to be that “race” is an algorithm of the Enlightenment, and that because of its nature as a tool, a lever, a procedure—rather than as a biological fact—the “race algorithm” can be rewritten from actioning “inheritance” to “insurrection” (184). Then this logic rests on the idea that once we remove the “overdetermined history of ‘lack’” (199), which is the socially constructed meaning of “what any child can see” (193), we will be able to eliminate the negative effects of race.

The whole scope of technological difference, visual and otherwise, is made to hinge on the ethical imperative to include all persons as equals in the social contract. But can absolute equality under the law change “what any child can see,” or will visual difference continue to acquire new meaning even under a perfectly ethical system. To what extent are xenophobic tendencies social, or genetic? Can we really achieve equality while differentiation is screened only by ethics (using race as technology “for good”), or must we actually make such differentiation a physical impossibility (destroying race)?

Random article (just for the heck of it)

I noticed this in the NY times and thought it related to some questions we've been / will be asking about the (post-)racial future. I thought it was interesting that one resident referred to mixed race marriages as "a door opening." Is this door like Coleman's trap door? What is on the other side?

wear your best face.

The media is constantly circulating the white face, associating the idea of beauty with "conventionally recognized Caucasian features" (Kaw 4). Racial minorities strive for this kind of beauty through lightening of skin, straightening of hair, blue-eyed contacts, etc. Even permanent alterations are implemented as a "means for these women as racial minorities to attain better socioeconomic status" (Kaw 81). Not only are they striving for an 'ideal face', but also seeking to distance themselves from the negative associations of their own racial characteristics.

Some Asian-American women request "double-eyelid" surgery, which ultimately makes the eyes look wider. There exists many associations of Asian features with negative personality traits, and a wider eye look will supposedly allow these women to look more Caucasian. While it is argued that those who seek out cosmetic surgery are really expressing a freedom of choice, there seems to be an overlook of what society uses as markers of racial identity. As well as the disregard of the Caucasian face as the standard of beauty in American society, which is understood through the consistent presence of the Caucasian face within the media.

The idea of beauty is as specific as details of the face, as society constantly pushes for wider eyes, flatter nose or thinner lips. Although alteration of the body could be an exploration of the body and process of beautification, but with the media promoting Caucasian bodies as the models of beauty - desired body types will be referential to Caucasian characteristics.

Denial of Asian cultural agency in Kaw's articles

As a half-Asian I found this week’s readings completely riveting. Considering that my mother is Korean yet I am often mistaken as being of completely Caucasian ancestry and was raised with very little contact with Korean culture, I find myself unsure of my own expectations and thoughts on these articles.

I did, however, find Kaw’s essays to be extremely problematic.

She writes that Asian women “feel they are exercising their Americanness in their use of the freedome of individual choice” (77) and subsequently critiques them for seeking out cosmetic surgery that “does not so much benignly transform them as it ‘normalizes’” (78). Are these women excercising an American sense of individualism or are they conforming? I feel that Kaw is disregarding the East Asian (or at the very least, Korean) social expectation of establishment within a group. She denies the agency of Asian culture, despite the fact that two of the women had their surgery before coming to America. She places supreme emphasis on the power of the image of whiteness and focuses only on the external forces of American cultural standards.

Another quote I found interesting: “I guess I always wanted that sharp look—a look like you are smart.” Especially when considered in contrast with “the Oriental bookworm.” Is the standard of beauty smart but not bookish? I find that Kaw’s argument is not terribly grounded—her words could be twisted in either direction.

I also found it interesting that of the surgeries she cites as popular for caucasian women (but not for Asian American women), two of them—liposuction and wrinkle reduction—would, according to the stereotypes explored in Yamamoto’s article, be unnecessary for the slender and doll-faced oriental.

I cannot help but think of Akira Lippit's lecture last semester on Imagined Asian Languages--he was asked (by professor Chun, maybe?) what he thought of the large eyes in anime characters. He replied that the eyes are not, in fact white--they're not human at all--and postulated that the expectation that anime eyes reflect a coveting of Western features might be a Western myth.

It seems that the danger is writing about Asian-American identity is its positioning as always foreign. Asian-Americans are accused of being clannish yet seeking normalization; they're a "model minority" yet change their features in a bid to look smarter.

Perhaps these are all crude or petty points. Ultimately, I am compelled to critique Kaw’s myopic cultural assessment, but I am also hesitant in coming to a conclusion, being unsure as to the extent of my own cultural bias.

Two real lies

In the film Doris states that there is a price one has to pay associated with being a girl. What does it mean that the daughters do not understand? Why is the desire for authentic chinese eyes linked with youthful naivety according to Doris? Has liberal multiculturalism placed it seal on approval on this form of "de-racializing" (since whiteness is seen are absence of race) surgery.

the different hats of difference

I could benefit from an exploration of Yamamoto's interaction with difference on pages 76-81. I think I'm following (and if so, it is actually an important theme in my paper on Keeling) but I'm not totally sure:

"if the constant shiftings of identity, difference and subjectivity are necessary as a strategic deployment of resistance to hegemonic codes of representation that themselves continually change in order to adopt new modes of appropriative power, marginalized subjectivity must somehow be grounded if it is to include both the possibilities of multiplicity and a sense of coherent functionality" p81

My train of thought in reading this section:
A reflective being can develop a relationship with identity/self that acknowledges categorizations as produced and sustained by discourse. Some steps along the way might include recognizing:
-how difference operates and thus the impossibility of stable identity
-the neurotic tar pit absurdities of binaries, dialectics, and subject-object positioning

Put in sensitive practice, this reflective space affords explosions in common sense. The coordinates of time-space and "selfness" can travel and breathe.
This also opens the door to justice via motion. Explosions of common sense can engage representational practices (language, image, cinema.. any medium) and move discourse.

However, explosion is personal, and discursive bodies hunker, drag, loom. Thus, the proposed resistance to hegemonic force can also operate as disconnectedly-abstract. The incitement to explosion (aka: "possibilities of multiplicity") can itself totalize and do violent injustice to marginalized beings that experience practical suffering and repressive invisibility. Our theoretical notion of difference must be capable of multiple acknowledgement: the motion of explosion, and a practical reality of discourse
Something like that?

the issue of face

The issue of the physical racial differences as discussed by David Palumbo-Liu intrigues me in terms of the obsession with it in racial discourses. For many, the phenotypical traits of the Asian American are unchangeable, and will perpetually make the person as the marginalized racial other. Because the physical appearance is seen as related to one’s interiority, including qualities such as trustworthiness and beauty as well as social engagement and mental structures, attributes that are all socially constructed rather than naturally determined, possessing the face with traits associated with a certain race ultimately comes done to differences in the individual’s economic benefits.

Also interesting to me is the idea of a future face of America supposedly resulted from intermarriage, but indeed virtually produced. Have one single face that is representative of all people in the country reaffirms the idea of having a single race rather than celebrate the idea of diversity and multiplicity. Also, the flatness of the face which assumes an ahistorical position simply dismisses all the historical and material relations central to the issue of race, making it impossible to have a politics of race.

who's getting surgery, who's not getting surgery

Zane makes an important move in contextualizing eye surgery in different and particular nexuses of class and location, highlighting the way eyelid reconstruction is used by Chinese in the Phillipines to reinforce the a marker of class status, and by Latin-Americans in Japan in order to pass as Japanese and immigrate (173). In this vein, I want to complicate Palumbo-Liu’s idea that eye surgery among Asian Americans in the U.S. constitutes a move towards hybridity and holds in it suggestions of a post-racial future. The hybrid metropole that Palumbo-Liu discusses can not be taken apart from its supporting periphery, spread out across the globe in the farms and factories that sustain it. For every Asian-American subject in the visual economy of race, there are hundreds of Asian and other people of color who are subjects in the invisible economy that produces the entire material existence of the metropole, and it is important to place hybridity in this context.
What effect does the preponderance of eye surgery, and the different possibilities of its interpretation (including but not limited to an acquiescence and perpetuation of racist ideology, a destabilization of that same racist ideology in calling into consideration the connections between physical characteristics and interiority/self) have on the subject that does not get eye surgery, especially the subject in this periphery?

Americanization: Snow White conquers the world

I could find myself -- an Asian girl dissatisfied with her small eyes and flat nose -- in many parts of the this week's readings. One interesting fact is that I am not American in any aspect (I moved here only less than three years ago), but my standard of beauty coincides much with that of Asian American women described in many readings. I wonder why.

Earlier today I watched a Youtube video (that clearly has become a sensation of a sort in the last couple days) of a white girl demanding "American manner" (which, for her, is synonymous to basic etiquette and politeness) to Asians (she didn't bother calling them Asian Americans) who lack independence, who speak on the phone loudly in libraries in Chinese, and who (might) have family in tsunami-struck Japan. Her conceptualization of "American-ness" and "Asian" excellently exemplifies Kaw's point on association of qualities to certain visual racial features. As soon as this white American girl sees a person with Asian facial and physical features, without any information about that person's nationality or upbringing, she automatically associates all the stereotypes she had about Asian. What particularly interests me here is her association of Asian visual features and "foreign-ity". The girl says how all those Asian kids at UCLA bring along their parents and grandparents all the way from Asia to go for grocery shopping. Whether that Asian student is fourth-generation Californian whose ancestors came to America before her own European ancestors did, that student's visual feature automatically represents qualities of foreign minority, which therefore is contradictory to "American-ness" (=American manners, American ideals, common sense, etc).

Yet all the Asian Americans, or Asians residing in Asian country (including myself), are not free from this exact same way of thinking. In this sense, despite the huge temporal and situational gap between the two, Seoul that I grew up is much similar to post-war Seoul described by Palumbo-Liu. I grew up watching Disney princess movies and Japanese Anime with super hero(ine)s who looked even more white than Disney princesses. My parents used to buy Disney movies without Korean dubbing in a hope that I can learn (American) English effectively. I grew up playing with Korean-made Jenny dolls (basically replication of Barbie dolls). Yes, the doll's name was Jenny which was obviously not Korean, and she was white and brunette. I did not look like Snow White, Sailor Moon, or Jenny doll. I could never be as American as they were, but I, like many other Korean people, desired American/white/western ideal, living in a western style apartment, dressing myself in a pair of jeans and t-shirts, and eventually deciding to study abroad in America for more successful life. And a part of me still desire bigger eyes, defined nose, smaller face, and longer legs. Perhaps I have always been foreign in my own world, and so was every other marginalized Koreans living in westernized Korean society.

Ps. A random question to the whole class. Do you find Lucy Liu attractive? She is really far away from the modern Asian(or at least Korean) standard of beautiful women, which rather looks like this.

self-invention

Although I agree with Kaw--that Asian American women who undergo plastic surgery do so out of self-loathing, as an "expression of alienation in society and a negation of the body induced by unequal power relationships" (77)-- I am left wondering about the agency of these women using race as a technology to manifest their self-creation.
The testimonies of the women interviewed clearly display the affects of the naturalization of white female beauty as normal and the most desirable, idealized beauty, as well as the workings of the medical industry to make eyelid surgery appear a 'necessity' to achieve economic success and assimilation into American culture. It is clear, as Kaw argues, that the subjected are complicit in the reproduction of their own domination.

Yet, I wonder if there is a kind of racial liberation possible in using technology to recreate oneself--by rejecting one's given or essentialized racial characteristics and distrubing race's reliance on visuality to create a more ambiguously raced self.  These women do not become white, but are no longer typically or identifiably Asian. Is there anything viable or empowering in the ability to procure some of the social privileges of whiteness by discarding the visual markers of race to become self-created (non)racial subjects? Are these women "breaking the bounds of racial categories" (20)?

Deracializing the Self to Conform to the Other

I have been very interested in the topic of this week for a very long time now. When I was a little kid I watched a documentary on Asian-Americans taping their eyes to get a crease and how they based their appearance on this one tiny thing that I never even thought of as important before I saw the documentary. Ever since then I have realized through the extreme popularity of body modification on the most minor to the most major scales, along with the popularity of skin bleaching and color contact usage in minority communities for tactical reasons, how much both majority and minority groups base their appearance on societal norms.

The hatred of the self stems from a young age, which I believe Keeling or Rhodes brought up in the readings three weeks ago, when girls are brought up thinking that their difference is ugly. For Asian Women, their hatred is direct to their eyes which illustrate the “monotonous…‘Oriental girl’[‘s]…‘dilligen[ce]’…‘nimble fingers’ and…‘slow wit’”, as Eugenia Kaw states on page 80 of her article “Medicalization of Racial Features: Asian American Women and Cosmetic Surgery”. By thinking that their eyes are illustrative of this cultural stereotype, Asian women are led to believe that they must change their appearance because the ideas of “the notion that Asian features are inadequate” (Medicalization p. 81) are so ingrained in culture that it is impossible for them to envision a successful future with their current looks. It is the perpetuation of these ideas that makes these women to do what they do in order to break the association with their stereotype. Instead of trying to break the cultural stereotypes in other ways, they break away from their Asian features in order to assimilate with American culture to attain success and freedom that White women have; however, these women aren’t conforming to Americanness per se, they are “conform[ing] to certain standards of beauty” (Medicalization p. 79) which just so happens to be the stereotypical American look. By conforming to American standards of beauty, they are making it easier for them to have the All-American life by attaining “‘symbolic capital’…in the form of a look that holds more prestige” (Medicalization p. 78.)

At first I wondered why, instead of trying to attain cultural and symbolic capital in ways such as education and mannerisms, these women went for the more drastic option; however, I realized that America has its idea of beauty ingrained into both White Americans and Hyphenated Americans and that to many, it seems impossible to break into a successful area without buying into this vision of beauty that is internalized at birth. While America is not as racially segregated as it was in the past, it is still very much segregated by who has beautiful features and who doesn’t; however, since the beautiful look is often thought of to be the classic All-American look, beauty segregation can be looked at as racial segregation, just in a more expensive coat.

Return vs. Fanon's Loop

I’m interested in Yamamoto’s discussion of the marginalized person’s response to the postmodern privileging of the fractured and multiple over the whole self. She points out that those who suffer fractionalization and disengagement from their identities as a condition of their experience do not have the same privilege of thinking themselves into this state as a theoretical project. “Marginalized subjectivity must somehow be grounded if it is to include both the possibilities of multiplicity and a sense of coherent functionality,” she writes (81). I’m intrigued by this idea of “being grounded,” as colloquial and abstract as the idea sounds. Yamamoto suggests also that this sense of “being grounded” is sought (although not exactly found) through Japanese Americans’ “necessity to return to [their] so-called roots,” since her homeland is what one writer calls “the fount of my strength, the guiding arrow to which I constantly refer before heading for a new direction,” (82). To me, this fraught but widely appealing approach to reconciling different identities resonates with Fanon’s examination of blackness (as) temporality and the “closed circuit” of a colonial past continually reasserting itself into the present. Could this idea of return provide a kind of foil to Fanon’s manic loop, an alternative project of reconciliation through which fragmented parts are acknowledged?

Face Powder, Fecund Beauties, and Blinking Correctly

Heidegger wrote, and I paraphrase, that 'the fundamental event of the modern age is the conquest of the world as picture', and this is something that I've been fascinated with for a while. I think this is particularly relevant to the discussion of cosmetic alteration on Asians' eyelids in the attempt to look more western/white/caucasian. One might argue that this is largely due to the role photographic and cinematic technologies have played in fundamentally altering societal conceptions of beauty, rendering the unfolded eyelid inelegant. Hollywood and American advertising are potent forces and, by sheer overstimulation and neural potentiation, serve to posit the 'true' image of beauty in a way that is difficult to overcome. One question is: is this a societal interest in the west culturally, visually or unconsciously? Or what else might it be?

There are some society-wide aesthetic drives that are interested in whiteness, but which don't seem to derive from a fixation on caucasian whiteness and rather whiteness unto itself. When I was in Thailand, I realized after a while that all of the convenience stores sold body-whitening powder, which would be applied to the skin in order to hide the shade of a tan. And some chose to walk around the streets of the city with sun umbrellas, shading their skin in the attempt to keep it light. The fact that there are tendencies toward whiteness in this regard – as a mark of wealth, or not having to work in the sun – is something that I think should be noted as evidence that there exist some tendencies toward non-American or western whiteness, and which perhaps transcend such reasoning.

And in this vein Margaret Mead, in her classic ethnological account of the people of Samoa, describes the Samoan's aesthetic desire for well-fattened fecund beauties, slathered with oil and let to lounge around all day – quite a deviation from the conception of beauty in the cultures we've been considering. I bring this up somewhat crudely to illustrate a point, which is that in the absence of external media technologies which might frame their choices, the Samoans developed a preference that is completely absurd to our sensibilities.

Discursive Power and Objects of Agency

Reading Kaw's articles in which she described Asian American women as objects of grievance were very unsettling. Particularly, I found it unsettling for her to have presented Asian American (AA) women as agentiveless and objects of swallowing in Freud's process of melancholia. Referring to Cheng's Melancholia of Race, this fetishized cosmetic surgery can be read as metonymic for the politics of identities and agency: (white) America has eaten AA women's identities and those identities have been integrated into such a system of normalized whiteness, which, argued Kaw, was desirable. Yes, perhaps AA women were objects of grievance, but as Cheng complicated in her usage of psychoanalysis--What about the agency of the object (Asian American women) being swallowed? What about the privileging of the subject who swallows the object? (I believe Kaw privileged the subject over the object by having read her informants in such a way, even though her articles critically engaged the object.) Was the object passive? Kaw showed these positions as irrefutable and essentially fundamental: AA women as objects and white as subjects, and this contributed to her overall flawed argument. And the fact of her using just one ethnic Asian category as representative of the totality of Asian Americans was problematic. Because of her insistence on AA women victimhood, it made me wonder, at times, if she was trying to exploitatively show the psychological damages inflicted on AA women or if she speaking to the more problematic color/racial line. And her research made it uncertain whether by saying Asian American she actually spoke for the entire race of Asian Americans. Were all Asian Americans wanting plastic surgery? Did whites not undergo surgery for the same purposes as well? Was Kaw perhaps essentializing Asian Americans? My last interjection is simple, but important: Couldn't AA women have gotten plastic surgery to blur the racial/color line that have ascribed certain phenotypes to Asians? Kaw's articles were ludicrous in that her arguments and research findings were simple and superfluous, in which her discursive argument has the potential to shape perceptions of AA communities.