Synopses & Reviews
Representing some of the most exciting work in critical ethnic studies, the essays in this collection examine the production of racialized, gendered, and sexualized difference, and the possibilities for progressive coalitions, or the andldquo;strange affinities,andrdquo; afforded by nuanced comparative analyses of racial formations. The nationalist and identity-based concepts of race underlying the mid-twentieth-century movements for decolonization and social change are not adequate to the tasks of critiquing the racial configurations generated by neocolonialism and contesting its inequities. Contemporary regimes of power produce racialized, gendered, and sexualized violence and labor exploitation, and they render subjects redundant and disposable by creating new, nominally nonracialized categories of privilege and stigma. The editors of
Strange Affinities contend that the greatest potential for developing much-needed alternative comparative methods lies in women of color feminism, and the related intellectual tradition that Roderick A. Ferguson has called queer of color critique. Exemplified by the work of Audre Lorde, Cherrandiacute;e Moraga, Barbara Smith, and the Combahee River Collective, these critiques do not presume homogeneity across racial or national groups. Instead, they offer powerful relational analyses of the racialized, gendered, and sexualized valuation and devaluation of human life.
Contributors
Victor Bascara
Lisa Marie Cacho
M. Bianet Castellanos
Martha Chew Sandaacute;nchez
Roderick A. Ferguson
Grace Kyungwon Hong
Helen H. Jun
Kara Keeling
Sanda Mayzaw Lwin
Jodi Melamed
Chandan Reddy
Ruby C. Tapia
Cynthia Tolentino
Review
andldquo;This ambitious and theoretically compelling volume lays the groundwork for a andlsquo;new ethnic studiesandrsquo; by centering gender and sexuality within comparative race projects. In a globally integrated economy, with older forms of colonialism and the nation-state giving way to new modes of neocolonial exploitation and domination under the shadow of global capitalism, the need for a new ethnic studies that can unpack the political and cultural implications of these evolving social relations in various contexts and locations is ever more urgent.andrdquo;andmdash;David L. Eng, author of The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy
Review
andldquo;In a world reorganized by neoliberal globalization, the stark inequalities of new class and racial formations require newly sharpened analytic and political tools. The essays collected in Grace Kyungwon Hongandrsquo;s and Roderick A. Fergusonandrsquo;s Strange Affinities address these realities, stretching our too static concepts and methods, and challenging our political visions. Drawing on women of color feminism and queer of color critique, this indispensable volume suggests new modes of analysis for ethnic studies and feminist and queer theory, and it provides new ways of thinking the intertwined histories of race, class, nation, gender, and sexuality for the twenty-first century.andrdquo;andmdash;Lisa Duggan, author of Sapphic Slashers: Sex, Violence, and American Modernity
Review
andldquo;The contributorsandrsquo; . . . many pieces convey both an astonishing range of insights and a tone that takes differences within difference as salutary, if not always comfortable.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;[T]hese essays help to define the contours of new ways of doing ethnic studies, recognizing yet resistant to minority nationalisms and normative forms of comparative analysis.andrdquo;
Synopsis
Collection of essays that use queer studies and feminism as a lens for examining the relationships between racialized communities.
Synopsis
A collection of essays analyzing the production of racialized, gendered, and sexualized difference, and the possibilities for progressive coalitions, or strange affinities, afforded by nuanced comparative analyses of racial formations.
About the Author
Grace Kyungwon Hong is Associate Professor of Asian American Studies and Womenandrsquo;s Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of The Ruptures of American Capital: Women of Color Feminism and the Cultures of Immigrant Labor.
Roderick A. Ferguson is Associate Professor and Chair of American Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction / Grace Kyungwon Hong and Roderick A. Ferguson 1
I. Alternative Identifications
1. Racialized Hauntings of the Devalued Dead / Lisa Marie Cacho 25
2. I = Another: Digital Identity Politics / Kara Keeling 53
3. Reading Tehran in Lolita: Making Racialized and Gendered Difference Work for Neoliberal Multiculturalism / Jodi Melamed 76
2. Undisciplined Knowledges
4. The Lateral Moves of African American Studies in a Period of Migration / Roderick A. Ferguson 113
5. Volumes of Transnational Vengeance: Fixing Race and Feminism on the Way to Kill Bill / Ruby Tapia 131
6. Time for Rights? Loving, Gay Marriage, and the Limits of Comparative Legal Justice / Chandan Reddy 148
7. Romance with a Message: W. E. B. Du Bois's Dark Princess and the Problem of the Color Line / Sanda Mayzaw Lwin 175
3. Unincorporated Territories, Interrupted Times
8. andquot;In the Middleandquot;: The Miseducation of a Refugee / Victor Bascara 195
9. Deconstructing the Rhetoric of Mestizaje through the Chinese Presence in Mexico / Martha Chew Sand#225;nchez 215
10. Fun with Death and Dismemberment: Irony, Farce, and the Limits of Nationalism in Oscar Zeta Acosta's The Revolt of the Cockroach People and Ana Castillo's So Far from God / Grace Kyungwon Hong 241
11. Becoming Chingand#243;n/a: A Gendered and Racialized Critique of the Global Economy / M. Bianet Castellanos 270
12. Black Orientalism: Nineteenth-Century Narratives of Race and U.S. Citizenship / Helen H. Jun 293
13. andquot;A Deep Sense of No Longer Belongingandquot;: Ambiguous Sties of Empire in Ana Lydia Vega's Miss Florence's Trunk / Cynthia Tolentino 316
References 337
Contributors 359
Index 363