Introduction to Anglophone Cultural Studies

Chinatown, London Chinatown, New York Chinatown, San Francisco

Session 2

Chinatowns, Diaspora, Post-Colonialism

• Organizational Things Again…

• Part I: Chinatowns

• Part II: The Term Diaspora

• Part III: Postcolonial Theory and Criticism

Outline of today’s lecture:

Organizational Things...

• Books/ background reading material– Paul S. Boyer, The Enduring Vision…– Concise 4th edition (2001): 0-618-10198-5 (approx. 33

Euros)– Concise 5th edition (2006): 0-618-47382-3 (approx. 70

Euros)– Hardcover new edition (2007): 0-618-80159-6 (approx.

53 Euros)• PPPs• Handouts• Stinshoff/Schwarzkopf… again…

– Refer to the Email sent around by Olaf Simons• Anything else?

Exercise: What is mediated here?

The theater in Chinatown was crowded to the doors. Every night actors brought from Canton played and sang the old Chinese operas. If Billy Pan, the manager, announced a deficit at the end of the end of the lunar year, businessmen contributed money to cover it. The theater was a bulwark of home to them. Their children went to American schools, spoke the American language, acted like American children. The fathers and mothers were not highly educated people, and they could not express to the children what China was, except that it was their own country, which must not be forgotten. But in the theater the children could see for themselves what China was.” (Pearl S. Buck, Kinfolk)

bulwark = barricade; sth. serving as a defense or safeguard

Notes:

• Immigrants did not cut their ties to China• Difficult adaptation processes characterized by

– cultural change and social conflict, – integration and pluralism

• Where do I belong – problem of rootedness? And what are the consequences?

• The consequences of refugee and/or immigration experience: the difficulty to craft an identity out of the unusual hybrid experience and upbringing of children

• The difficulty of transmitting an ‘idea’ of China to their children – they want their children to know about their ‘origin’ – aligned to that is the problem, then, what China can be conceived of as authentic? The Chinese Opera?

Chinatowns

• How would you define Chinatowns?• Section within an urban area (e.g. New York City) with a large

number of Chinese living outside of China• What are Chinatowns?

– Ethnic urban “enclave” – “miniature Chinas”?– Segregated ghettos?– Immigrant settlements (e.g. “Little Italy”?)

• Chinatown in San Francisco: first to be established outside Asia• The term “Chinatown“

– Chinatowns came to represent Chineseness

• Then and now – different conceptions?!

Now...

• center for commercialism, consumption, tourist attraction, food, venues for, e.g. Hollywood films?

• 1990s: Las Vegas’ Chinatown, Chinatown Plaza…

• http://www.lvchinatown.com/

Then...

Job positions:• e.g. on the Transcontinental Railroad; • mine workers

Chinese immigration: • first period: 1848/9-1882; • second period: 1882-1965; • third period: 1965 to the present• the gold rush of the 1840s and 1850s

• 1862: Congress authorized the construction of a transcontinental railroad

• completed in 1869• “Last Spike“, 1869

What do the cartoons suggest about public sentiment towards

Chinese immigrants?

Discriminatory Laws

• Hall vs. People (1856)• special taxes on "foreign" miners and Chinese fishermen• 1870: The “Naturalization Act”

– Excludes Chinese from citizenship – prohibits the wives of Chinese laborers from entering the

United States• 1875: The “Page Law”

– forbids the entry of Chinese, Mongolian, and Japanese contract laborers, prostitutes, and felons

• “Exclusion Act” (1882-1943)• 1892: The “Geary Act”

The Chinese Exclusion Act

• United States Government passed the Chinese Exlusion Act in 1882

• the first immigration restriction law aimed at a single ethnic group.

• The Act prohibits the entry of Chinese laborers into the United States

• Economic consequences:– into small import-export businesses– into labor-intensive manufacturing and – into service industries (laundry, domestic work, and restaurants) – into agriculture in rural communities in California;

• The Geary Act (1892) • All Chinese in the United States are required to carry registration

certificate

20th Century

• The Exclusion Act: repealed during WWII• The Magnuson Acts sets a quota of 105 Chinese immigrants

a year. • The repeal allowed Chinese-American veterans to bring their

families During the 1960s:• 1965: Immigration and “Naturalization Act“; many of the basic

rights denied Chinese Americans were restored• The end of the Vietnam War brought a wave of Vietnamese

refugees of Chinese descent, who put their own stamp on San Francisco Chinatown

Chinatowns, summarized

• Complex urban phenomena shaped by, e.g. – immigration politics, – colonial history– trade relations, – commercial exchanges, – exploitation, and nowadays in particular by– tourism

• Chinatowns differ (depending on location)• What are Chinatowns?• Chinatowns: diasporic phenomena?

Part II: The Term Diaspora

• Diasporic? • Diaspora?Etymol.: Greek• dispersion, from diaspeirein, to spread about:

• dia- = apart; • dia- + speirein, to sow, scatter (of seeds)

• the dispersion or spreading of something that was originally localized

(Simplistic) Definition: The term diaspora describes an “ethnic” community that – because of expulsion (Ausweisung/Vertreibung) or emigration – has spread from an original ‘center’ to at least two peripheral places.

Dinh Q. Lê:Vietnamese-American Artist

“Personal Memories,” 2003

“Persistence of memory no.8“, 2001

Born in 1968,  Hà-Tiên,  Viêt NamIn 1978 his family emigrated to Los AngelesMajor theme: real and imagined memories of the Vietnam War

Historical Context

• Vietnamese-American; the difficulty to craft an identity out of an unusual hybrid experience

• 1975 – 1990: more than 2 million refugees left Viêt Nam, Laos, and Cambodia (figure 1)

• about 1.5 million resettled in Australia, Western Europe, and North America.

• Viêt Nam, Laos, Cambodia: former French colony of Indochina

• refugee “crisis” owing to the cold war

South East Asia

• Laos and Cambodia: under French colonial rule until 1953

• Viêt Nam until 1954 (Fall of Dien Bien Phu)• American intervention in Viêt Nam• “Domino theory“ US foreign policy: prevent Communist • 1961: the U.S. signs a treaty with Saigon to help the

South in Viêt Nam• 1965: first combat troops land in Danang• 1973: last American troops leave Viêt Nam• 1975: Fall of Saigon (North wins)

1975-

• official reunification as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (1976)

• all other political parties are banned,

• “reeducation“ camps

• estimated 1 million people were imprisoned without formal charges or trials

• “boat people“• “Viêt Kieu” (Vietnamese-American)• Vietnamese Diaspora

Diasporas…

• To repeat: The term diaspora describes an ethnic community that – because of expulsion or emigration – has spread from an original ‘center’ to at least two peripheral places;

• Diasporic identity/ies

• Diaspora: term gained importance in social science, cultural studies and literary studies

Part III: Postcolonial Theory & Criticism

• Diaspora and Postcolonial Studies

• 1980s and 1990: central discourse in Cultural Studies

• Key topics/issues/areas of concern:

– (Im)-Migration; zones of contact and contestation

– Imperialism

– Economic, political & cultural legacies/inequities caused by colonialism

• Theorists/critics/writers (selective): Edward Said, Arif Dirlik, Benedict Anderson, Homi K. Bhabha; Gayatri Spivak, Robert Young, Robin Cohen, Bill Ashcroft, Helen Tiffin, Salman Rushdie, and many more!

Terms explained

1) Colonialism• expansion

• recurrent ‘feature’ of human history;

• conquest and control of other people’s land and goods

2) Imperialism• OED: imperialism = pertaining to “Empire” (defined as political

system)

• defined as economic system: system of penetration and control of markets

• processes that lead to domination and control

• Imperial country = the “center”

• Colony = the place which the ‘center’ penetrates and controls

What is the “post”?

• “Post” in a temporal sense – after…;

• By 1930s, colonies and ex-colonies covered approx. 85% of the land surface of the globe.

– Only parts of Arabia, Persia, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Tibet, China, Siam and Japan had never been under formal European government (Fieldhouse, 1989)

• So: post = after colonialism?

• Post-colonial: used to cover cultures affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present day

“Post“ ...:

• Post-colonial theory involves discussions about experience of various kinds: – migration, – slavery, suppression, resistance, – representation, – difference,– race, gender, place,

• Post-colonial theory responses to the influential master discourses of imperial Europe

• None of these is ‘essentially’ post-colonial, but together they form the complex fabric of the field.” (Ashcroft/Griffiths/Tiffin)

What do postcolonial critics do?

• “Post-colonial literature is writing by members of marginalized groups – writers who are struggling to find voices in which to express the world view of their groups, who are struggling to be heard and to be understood, who are struggling against cultural hegemony and assimilation and neo-colonialism.”

• Postcolonial critics analyze these writings;

• Let’s be more precise here…

Cont‘d...

• radically question expansionist imperialism of colonizing powers,

• critically reflect on the relationship between “colonizer” and “colonized”

• study the effects of cultural displacement that followed colonial conquest,

• explore consequences for personal and ‘communal identities,

• examine ways of resistance and defense

• analyze the role of literature in the production of cultural representation

• foreground questions of cultural difference and diversity…

Some terms found/used/elaborated on:

• Ethnicities• Hybridity; cross-overs• Identity• Binary oppositions • Self and Other(ness)• Colonization and de-colonization• Exoticism; Orientalism• Nationality; nation-state; citizenship• Power

• See, for example: Loomba, Ania. Colonialism/Postcolonialism. 2nd ed. London & New York: Routledge, 2005.

Stop & think:

• Developments in the field of postcolonial studies• New approaches in postcolonial studies• why? • Global changes and processes of migration• ‘old’ terminology no longer suffices

• Diasporas… from negative connotation to…• a term that allows for an approach to global phenomena in society,

culture and literature that denounces simplistic nation-state categorization

• Refer to: Mayer, Ruth. Diaspora: Eine kritische Begriffsbestimmung. Cultural Studies 14. Ed. Rainer Winter. Bielefeld: transcript, 2005.