Globalization and "Asian Values": Teaching and Theorizing Asian American Literature

College Literature, Winter 2005 by Shu, Yuan

When I first designed and taught a course titled "Sexuality in Asian American Literature" at a university in the Midwest in the mid-1990s, I intended to employ the word "sexuality" as a term that would evoke the stereotypes of Asians and Asian Americans in American popular culture on the one hand and invite a critique of the politics of representation on the other. As we discussed the social, political, and historical dimensions of sexuality that had been explored in Asian American literature, however, students became uncomfortable with the radical critiques produced by Asian American writers and critics and endeavored to engage questions that they considered as politically neutral and culturally accessible. What are the "Asian values" reflected in these texts? How do we non-Asian Americans benefit from studying these texts? Such an approach to Asian American literature highlights the challenge in teaching students who are unfamiliar with Asian American political issues but have been preoccupied with their own sense of Asian American culture as an equivalent of Asian entertainment and the Asian economic success. Though most students in the Midwest have seldom, if at all, been exposed to Asian American issues, they have certainly consumed Asian products in one way or another, which may mean that they have tasted Chinese, Japanese, and Thai food in their local restaurants, watched Hollywood and Hong Kong Kung Fu movies, and played Nintendo and Sega video and computer games featuring Asian themes and characters. By the time they take an Asian American literature course, they not only expect to have more consumption of Asian products, but they are also interested in investigating some cultural concepts underlying the Asian products.

Such a conception or misconception of Asian American culture might be easily dismissed on the ground that the students conflate Asian and Asian American cultures or simply fall victim to the commercialization of minority literature in American culture and society. The questions of minority culture and racial politics, however, have become much more complicated since the tragic events of September 11th. To begin, why should college students today study minority literature and expose themselves to the racial politics in the United States? Moreover, why shouldn't "Asian values" serve as a legitimate topic in Asian American studies courses? Why shouldn't the question of "common ground" become part of ethnic studies? Finally, how should we reconsider the relationship between the dominant American culture and Asian American literature in the age of globalization as well as in the current war against terrorism?

In this essay, rather than dismissing the question of "Asian values" as politically irrelevant to Asian American literature and imposing Asian American politics on students, I argue that we as instructors should investigate with students the emergence and evolvement of "Asian values" in the broader contexts of global capitalism and American political culture. We should first demystify "Asian values" as essential truths cherished by all Asian peoples, and interrogate these values as cultural inventions pursued by Asian national governments for their cultural imaginary and political convenience at the postcolonial moment. Furthermore, we should equally investigate how "Asian values" have been appropriated and assimilated into the dominant discourse in the American political context and how Asian Americans negotiate such appropriation and assimilation in the process. In reading "Asian values" in Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club as negotiation and interaction between the dominant and Asian American cultures, I suggest that we should recognize the extent that American capitalism has changed Asian America and reassess the interest that Asian American professionals and entrepreneurs have demonstrated in participating in American capitalism as argued by critic Viet Thanh Nguyen (2002, 6). Only by situating "Asian values" in such broader contexts of global capitalism and American political culture, can we have a glimpse of the changing reality of Asian America and the heterogeneity and multiplicity of Asian American cultural production. Only by examining "Asian values" in such broader contexts of global capitalism and American political culture, can we convince our students that "Asian values" are not politically neutral but are culturally loaded in a way that reflects the interests of different nation-states, groups, and individuals. Only by critiquing "Asian values" in such broader contexts of global capitalism and American culture, can we embrace what critic Palumbo-Liu calls "progressive humanism," a gesture that aims at the common good of humanity which has become increasingly important after the tragic events of September 11th, and understand racial and cultural differences in non-essentialist and historical materialist senses.

Globalization and the Emergence of "Asian Values" in the Asian Context

When students used the term "Asian values" in my class, they made two assumptions about Asian American culture, which were based on Asian cultures and the Asian economic power as represented by Japan and the "four tiger nations" (South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong). First, the students presumed that there had been some essential values shared by all peoples, societies, and cultures in East and Southeast Asia. Second, they equally postulated that these values had been central to the emergence of the Asian economic power and the material achievement of Asian Americans in American society. Such essentialist perception and grounding of "Asian values" require us to reconsider what constitutes these "values" in the Asian cultural context in the first place, how these values have functioned differently at different historical junctures, as well as why they have emerged and circulated as a cultural discourse in the American context.