A Race So Different: Performance and Law in Asian America
Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson
Abstract
Taking a performance studies approach to understanding Asian American racial subjectivity, this book argues that the law influences racial formation by compelling Asian Americans to embody and perform recognizable identities in both popular aesthetic forms (such as theater, opera, or rock music) and in the rituals of everyday life. Tracing the production of Asian American selfhood from the era of Asian Exclusion through the Global War on Terror, the book explores the legal paradox whereby US law apprehends the Asian American body as simultaneously excluded from and included within the national ... More
Taking a performance studies approach to understanding Asian American racial subjectivity, this book argues that the law influences racial formation by compelling Asian Americans to embody and perform recognizable identities in both popular aesthetic forms (such as theater, opera, or rock music) and in the rituals of everyday life. Tracing the production of Asian American selfhood from the era of Asian Exclusion through the Global War on Terror, the book explores the legal paradox whereby US law apprehends the Asian American body as simultaneously excluded from and included within the national body politic. Bringing together broadly defined forms of performance, from artistic works such as Madame Butterfly to the Supreme Court's oral arguments in the Cambodian American deportation cases of the twenty-first century, this book invites conversation about how Asian American performance uses the stage to document, interrogate, and complicate the processes of racialization in US law. Through his impressive use of a rich legal and cultural archive, the book articulates a robust understanding of the construction of social and racial realities in the contemporary United States.
Keywords:
Asian Americans,
Global War on Terror,
Asian American performance,
racialization,
U.S. law,
Asian Exclusion
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2013 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780814738399 |
Published to NYU Press Scholarship Online: March 2016 |
DOI:10.18574/nyu/9780814738399.001.0001 |