Tonal intelligence : the aesthetics of Asian inscrutability during the long cold war / Sunny Xiang.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Xiang, Sunny, author.

Series:

Literature Now.

Literature Now

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Asian Americans--Race identity.

Asian Americans.

Asian-American--Race identity.

Asian-American.

Asians in literature.

Asians in motion pictures.

Cold War--Secret service.

Cold War.

Orientalism--United States--History--20th century.

Orientalism.

Propaganda, American--Asia--History--20th century.

Propaganda, American.

Propaganda, American--Pacific Area--History--20th century.

Asia--Foreign public opinion, American.

Asia.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (368 pages).

Other Title:

Temperament, temporality, and the American Cold War in Asia

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, [2020]

Summary:

Why were U.S. intelligence organizations so preoccupied with demystifying East and Southeast Asia during the mid-twentieth century? Sunny Xiang offers a new way of understanding the American cold war in Asia by tracing aesthetic manifestations of “Oriental inscrutability” across a wide range of texts. She examines how cold war regimes of suspicious thinking produced an ambiguity between “Oriental” enemies and Asian allies, contributing to the conflict’s status as both a “real war” and a “long peace.”Xiang puts interrogation reports, policy memos, and field notes into conversation with novels, poems, documentaries, and mixed media work by artists such as Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ha Jin, and Trinh T. Minh-ha. She engages her archive through a reading practice centered on tone, juxtaposing Asian diasporans who appear similar in profile yet who differ in tone. Tonal Intelligence considers how the meaning of race, war, and empire came under pressure during two interlinked periods of geopolitical transition: American “nation-building” in East and Southeast Asia during the mid-twentieth century and Asian economic modernization during the late twentieth century. By reading both state records and aesthetic texts from these periods for their tone rather than their content, Xiang shows how bygone threats of Asian communism and emergent regimes of Asian capitalism have elicited distinct yet related anxieties about racial intelligibility. Featuring bold methods, unlikely archives, and acute close readings, Tonal Intelligence rethinks the marking and making of race during the long cold war.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Introduction: Hardly War, Partly History

Chapter One The Tone of Intelligence: Unconventional Warfare and Its Archives

Chapter Two The Tone of Rumors: Imperial Tours and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Critique of Japanese Exceptionalism

Chapter Three The Tone of the Times: Historical Temperament in the Works of Induk Pahk and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

Chapter Four The Tone of Documentation: Combating the Brainwashee’s Drone in Korean War “Testimonies” and “Confessions”

Chapter Five The Tone of Intimacy: Imperial Brotherhood and Trinh T. Minh- ha’s Cinematic Interviews

Coda— The Tone of Commons: Solidarities Without a Solid

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-231-55191-6

OCLC:

1159772288