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Asia/Pacific as Space of Cultural Production

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Pages: 368

Published: January 1995

Editors: Rob Wilson, Arif Dirlik

Contributors: Rob Wilson, M. Consuelo León W., Chris Connery, Lawson Fusao Inada, Epeli Hau′ofa, John Fielder, Chiu Yen Liang, Haunani-Kay Trask, Joseph P. Balaz, Subramani, Albert Wendt, Miriam Fuchs, Christopher Bongie, Terese Svoboda, Tsushima Yuko, Leo T. S. Ching, Thomas Carmichael, Peter Schwenger, Theophil Saret Reuney, Arif Dirlik, Steve Olive, John Whittier Treat

The Pacific, long a source of fantasies for EuroAmerican consumption and a testing ground for the development of EuroAmerican production, is often misrepresented by the West as one-dimensional, culturally monolithic. Although the Asia/Pacific region occupies a prominent place in geopolitical thinking, little is available to readers outside the region concerning the resistant communities and cultures of Pacific and Asian peoples. Asia/Pacific as Space of Cultural Production fills that gap by documenting the efforts of diverse indigenous cultures to claim and reimagine Asia/Pacific as a space for their own cultural production.
From New Zealand to Japan, Taiwan to Hawaii, this innovative volume presents essays, poems, and memoirs by prominent Asia/Pacific writers that resist appropriation by transnational capitalism through the articulation of autonomous local identities and counter-histories of place and community. In addition, cultural critics spanning several locations and disciplines deconstruct representations—particularly those on film and in novels—that perpetuate Asia/Pacific as a realm of EuroAmerican fantasy.
This collection, a much expanded edition of boundary 2, offers a new perception of the Asia/Pacific region by presenting the Pacific not as a paradise or vast emptiness, but as a place where living, struggling peoples have constructed contemporary identities out of a long history of hegemony and resistance. Asia/Pacific as Space of Cultural Production will prove stimulating to readers with an interest in the Asia/Pacific region, and to scholars in the fields of Asian, American, Pacific, postcolonial, and cultural studies.

Contributors. Joseph P. Balaz, Chris Bongie, William A. Callahan, Thomas Carmichael, Leo Ching, Chiu Yen Liang (Fred), Chungmoo Choi, Christopher L. Connery, Arif Dirlik, John Fielder, Miriam Fuchs, Epeli Hau`ofa, Lawson Fusao Inada, M. Consuelo León W., Katharyne Mitchell, Masao Miyoshi, Steve Olive, Theophil Saret Reuney, Peter Schwenger, Subramani, Terese Svoboda, Jeffrey Tobin, Haunani-Kay Trask, John Whittier Treat, Tsushima Yuko, Albert Wendt, Rob Wilson

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Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Additional Information

Author/Editor Bios

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Rob Wilson is Professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the author of Reimagining the American Pacific.

Arif Dirlik is Professor of History at Duke University and the editor of What Is in a Rim?

Table Of Contents

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Introduction: Asia/Pacific as Space of Cultural Production / Rob Wilson and Arif Dirlik 1

Mappings

Foundations of the American Image of the Pacific / M. Consuelo León 17

Pacific Rim Discourse: The U.S. Global Imaginary in the Late Cold War Years / Christopher L. Connery 30

Chemical Weapons Discourse in the "South Pacific" / William A. Callahan and Steve Olive 57

Shrinking the Pacific / Lawson Fusao Inada 80

Memory / Lawson Fusao Inada 82

Turning It Over / Lawson Fusao Inada 84

Our Sea of Islands / Epeli Hau'ofa 86

Movements

Sacred Sites and the City: Urban Aboriginality, Ambivalence, and Modernity / John Fielder 101

From the Politics of Identity to an Alternative Cultural Politics: On Taiwan Primoridal Inhabitants' A-systemic Movement / Chiu Yen Liang (Fred) 120

Pasts and Futures

Cultural Construction and Native Nationalism: Report from the Hawaiin Front / Jeffrey Tobin 147

Hawai'i / Haunani-Kay Trask 170

Da Mainland to Me / Joseph P. Balaz 175

Childhood as Fiction / Subramani 177

Three Poems for Kenzaburo Oe / Albert Wendt 204

Reading toward the Indigenous Pacific: Patricia Grace's Potiki, a Case Study / Miriam Fuchs 206

The Last Frontier: Memories of the Postcolonial Future in Keri Hulme's the bone people / Chris Bongie 226

The 747 Poem / Terese Svoboda 250

The Little Grass Shack / Terese Svoboda 251

Flows

The Possibility of Imagination in These Islands / Tsushima Yuko (Translated by Geraldine Harcourt; Introduction by Masao Miyoshi) 255

Imaginings in the Empires of the Sun: Japanese Mass Culture in Asia / Leo Ching 262

The Hong Kong Immigrant and the Urban Landscape: Shaping the Transnational Cosmopolitanism in the Era of Pacific Rim Capital / Katharyne Mitchell 284

Postmodernism and American Cultural Difference: Dispatches, Mystery Train, and The Art of Japanese Management / Thomas Carmichael 311

America's Hiroshima, Hiroshima's America / Peter Schwenger and John Whittier Treat 324

The Pulling of Olap's Canoe / Theophil Saret Rueney, translator 345

Contributors 351

Index 355

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Additional Information

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Paper ISBN: 978-0-8223-1643-5 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-8223-1629-9 / eISBN: 978-0-8223-9611-6 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822396116