National Abjection explores the vexed relationship between "Asian Americanness" and "Americanness” through a focus on drama and performance art. Karen Shimakawa argues that the forms of Asian Americanness that appear in U.S. culture are a function of national abjection—a process that demands that Americanness be defined by the exclusion of Asian Americans, who are either cast as symbolic foreigners incapable of integration or Americanization or distorted into an “honorary” whiteness. She examines how Asian Americans become culturally visible on and off stage, revealing the ways Asian American theater companies and artists respond to the cultural implications of this abjection. Shimakawa looks at the origins of Asian American theater, particularly through the memories of some of its pioneers. Her examination of the emergence of Asian American theater companies illuminates their strategies for countering the stereotypes of Asian Americans and the lack of visibility of Asian American performers within the theater world. She shows how some plays—Wakako Yamauchi’s 12-1-A, Frank Chin’s Chickencoop Chinaman, and The Year of the Dragon—have both directly and indirectly addressed the displacement of Asian Americans. She analyzes works attempting to negate the process of abjection—such as the 1988 Broadway production of M. Butterfly as well as Miss Saigon, a mainstream production that enacted the process of cultural displacement both onstage and off. Finally, Shimakawa considers Asian Americanness in the context of globalization by meditating on the work of Ping Chong, particularly his East-West Quartet.
of national subject formation...[f]or U.S Americanness to maintain its symbolic coherence, the national abject continually must be both made present and jettisoned' (2002: 3). Throughout English Theatre and Social Abjection: A Divided ...
Baum, L. Frank (1913) The Patchwork Girl of Oz (Chicago: Reilly & Britton Company) Bauman, Z. (2000) 'Social Issues of Law and Order', British Journal of Criminology, vol. 40, pp. 205–21 Berenstein, R. (1996) 'It Will Thrill You, ...
For Shimakawa, abjection's collectivity, especially embodied Asian American collectivity, functions to cohere the notion of Americanness as national identity. Her invaluable study reminds us that “abjection is at once a specular and ...
Feminist philosopher Julia Kristeva's formulation of abjection in Powers of Horror can offer much to an understanding of the ... Instances of audience aversion to geopolitical spectacle mark operations of (inter)national abjection.
Miller, Segregating Sound, 9. 33. Kelley, “Notes on Deconstructing 'The Folk,'” 1402. 34. Filene, Romancing the Folk, 3–4. 199 35. Miller, Segregating Sound, 275,276. 36. “55th Annual grammy Awards Nominees.” 37.
8 See Kondo, About Face; Schlossman, Actors and Activists; and Shimakawa, National Abjection for excellent studies of the Miss Saigon controversy and activism. 9 See Rubin, ''Thinking Sex,'' 297. Using Je√rey Weeks's term ''moral panic ...
Karen Shimakawa , National Abjection : The Asian American Body Onstage ( Durham , NC : Duke University Press , 2002 ) , 3 . 11. Shimakawa , National Abjection , 100 . 12. Zhang Longxi , Mighty Opposites : From Dichotomies to Differences ...
"The Japan of Pure Invention not only sheds new light on a seemingly familiar sold chestnut,' it raises new possibilities for understanding the endurance of orientalism in relation to both whiteness and blackness.
... an abundance of marvelous work has been doneonthe ways that thisplay,like no theatrical work before it, engages the racially and gender markedbody asasite of wounding and “national abjection,” as Karen Shimakawamight put it.
... in its figurative playfulness: With MacMurrough's final decisive retort, the mounting coordination in this episode of sexual and ethno-national identity-formation, sexual and ethno-national abjection, sexual and ethno-national ...