On not speaking Chinese : living between Asia and the West / Ien Ang.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ang, Ien.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Chinese--Foreign countries--Ethnic identity.

Chinese.

Chinese--Foreign countries.

Ethnicity.

Physical Description:

x, 230 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Routledge, 2001.

Summary:

In this major new book, leading cultural thinker Ien Ang engages with urgent questions of identity in an age of globalization and diaspora. The starting-point for Ang's discussion is the experience of visiting Taiwan. Ang, a person of Chinese descent, born in Indonesia and raised in the Netherlands, found herself 'faced with an almost insurmountable difficulty' -- surrounded by people who expected her to speak to them in Chinese. She writes: 'It was the beginning of an almost decade-long engagement with the predicaments of "Chineseness" in diaspora. In Taiwan I was different because I couldn't speak Chinese; in the West I was different because I looked Chinese.' From this autobiographical beginning, Ang goes on to reflect upon tensions between 'Asia' and 'the West' at a national and global level, and to consider the disparate meanings of 'Chineseness' in the contemporary world. She offers a critique of the increasingly aggressive construction of a global Chineseness, and challenges Western tendencies to equate 'Chinese' with 'Asian' identity. Ang then turns to 'the West', exploring the paradox of Australia's identity as a 'Western' country in the Asian region, and tracing Australia's uneasy relationship with its Asian neighbours, from the White Australia policy to contemporary multicultural society. Finally, Ang draws together her discussion of 'Asia' and 'the West' to consider the social and intellectual space of the 'in-between', arguing for a theorizing not of 'difference' but of 'togetherness' in contemporary societies.

Contents:

Introduction: between Asia and the West (in complicated entanglement) 1

Part I Beyond Asia: deconstructing diaspora 19

1 On not speaking Chinese: diasporic identifications and postmodern ethnicity 21

2 Can one say no to Chineseness?: Pushing the limits of the diasporic paradigm 37

3 Indonesia on my mind: diaspora, the Internet and the struggle for hybridity 52

4 Undoing diaspora: questioning global Chineseness in the era of globalization 75

Part II Beyond the West: negotiating multiculturalism 93

5 Multiculturalism in crisis: the new politics of race and national identity in Australia / With Jon Stratton 95

6 Asians in Australia: a contradiction in terms? 112

7 Racial/spatial anxiety: 'Asia' in the psycho-geography of Australian whiteness 126

8 The curse of the smile: ambivalence and the 'Asian' woman in Australian multiculturalism 138

9 Identity blues: rescuing cosmopolitanism in the era of globalization 150

Part III Beyond identity: living hybridities 161

10 Local/global negotiations: doing cultural studies at the crossroads 163

11 I'm a feminist but ...: 'other' women and postnational identities 177

12 Conclusion: together-in-difference (the uses and abuses of hybridity) 193.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 211-225) and index.

ISBN:

0415259126

0415259134

OCLC:

48551007