{"title":"Representational Politics in the Film Series “Asian Americans”: The Contestation of Identity Essentialism","authors":"Anh A. T. Nguyen","doi":"10.1177/01968599221096644","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This paper highlights counternarratives of identity essentialism (re)producing representational conflations to normalize the existing system of social hierarchies. Analyzing anti-hegemonic discourses of identity in the film series “Asian Americans”, I propound how anti-essentialist critiques work as a rhetorical vehicle for constructing coalitional possibilities. This essay reinstates the importance of deconstructing binary logics in understanding social and cultural relations regulating Asian/American derogatory representations. Unpacking the invisibility of ideological power in administering representational strategies, this essay employs intersectional lenses to visualize the contradiction of Asian/American politics reclaimed by the dynamic integration of capitalism, transnationalism, imperialist militarism, and racially sexual fetishism. Representational complexity thus becomes a modality of analytic unveiling the presence of power relations in racially gendering Asian/Americans.","PeriodicalId":45677,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication Inquiry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9000,"publicationDate":"2022-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Communication Inquiry","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01968599221096644","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This paper highlights counternarratives of identity essentialism (re)producing representational conflations to normalize the existing system of social hierarchies. Analyzing anti-hegemonic discourses of identity in the film series “Asian Americans”, I propound how anti-essentialist critiques work as a rhetorical vehicle for constructing coalitional possibilities. This essay reinstates the importance of deconstructing binary logics in understanding social and cultural relations regulating Asian/American derogatory representations. Unpacking the invisibility of ideological power in administering representational strategies, this essay employs intersectional lenses to visualize the contradiction of Asian/American politics reclaimed by the dynamic integration of capitalism, transnationalism, imperialist militarism, and racially sexual fetishism. Representational complexity thus becomes a modality of analytic unveiling the presence of power relations in racially gendering Asian/Americans.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Communication Inquiry emphasizes interdisciplinary inquiry into communication and mass communication phenomena within cultural and historical perspectives. Such perspectives imply that an understanding of these phenomena cannot arise soley out of a narrowly focused analysis. Rather, the approaches emphasize philosophical, evaluative, empirical, legal, historical, and/or critical inquiry into relationships between mass communication and society across time and culture. The Journal of Communication Inquiry is a forum for such investigations.