Revisiting Asiacentricity: Toward Thinking Dialectically about Asian American Identities and Negotiation

Abstract

This analysis explores the possible communicative themes that those who regard themselves as Asian Americans negotiate in their intercultural interactions. To do so, this analysis first locates the historical and political circumstances in which the discourse about Asian Americans has been socially constructed—that is to say, within the U.S. racialized and gendered context. Then, this analysis revisits Asiacentricity to see if any Asian communicative lives exist, as Asian American identities must be located both in global and local contexts. In this process, contradictory views of Asiacentricity are offered. Lastly, this analysis proposes new possibilities in moving toward thinking dialectically about the communicative themes that pertain to the material realities of Asian American identities and negotiation. In so doing, this analysis plays as a critical intervention to further dialogue about what makes Asian Americans Asian Americans in the discipline of communication.

KEYTERMS:

• Asiacentricity
• Asian American communication studies
• dialectics
• intercultural communication
• race and gender

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this article was presented as a top competitive paper at the Eastern Communication Association (ECA), Intercultural Communication Interest Group, Arlington, VA, April 2011.

I thank Dr. Carolyn Stroman and the blind-reviewers for their critiques and evaluations of this study. Also, I thank Drs. Jensen Chung (San Francisco State University) and Yoshitake Miike (University of Hawaii at Hilo) for inspiration in pursuing this kind of work. Moreover, I thank Drs. Deborah Borisoff (New York University), Bernadette Calafell (University of Denver), Victoria Chen (San Francisco State University), James Chesebro (Ball State University), Melbourne Cummings (Howard University), and William Starosta (Howard University) for their support and encouragement on his scholarship.