Strategic orientalism: racial capitalism and the problem of ‘Asianness’

Abstract

This article engages Cedric Robinson's articulations of racial capitalism and Blackness as an important set of intellectual provocations not only for Black and African diaspora studies, but also for anyone interested in understanding the relationship between racial identity, capitalism, and the development of oppositional consciousness. Specifically, I argue that by following the analytical terms of racial capitalism, we can better consider the global and historical placements of ‘Asians’ – a racial category constituted by and entangled with European imperialism – in terms of class, labor, and more. Is it possible to conceive of ‘Asianness,’ like Blackness, as an ontological totality (a kind of collective racial ‘being’ that is both defined by and subsumes a particular relation to capitalism)? The answer will likely be an uneasy and ambivalent one, since one Asian group after another has functioned as an intermediary labor class between Black and White. Putting together racial capitalism and Edward Said's theorization of orientalism, however, to focus on how racial–economic tropes operate on the ground, offers productive possibilities for implementing a racial capitalism approach to theorize ‘Asianness’ alongside Blackness, as well as suggesting different and strategic ways of ‘being’ Asian.

Keywords:

• blackness
• orientalism
• racial capitalism
• ontological totality
• Asian American
• activism

Acknowledgements

The author thanks H.L.T. Quan and Tiffany Willoughby-Herard for their vision, hard work, and insightful editorial comments in putting together this important collection. This article took its earliest form as part of a graduate-school directed reading with Ruth Wilson Gilmore, whose mentorship and intellectual guidance have been essential to it and to the author's own development as a scholar. Fred Moten's teaching was also influential. Any shortcomings are the author's.

Notes

 1. Elaine Kim has described this as an imperative to move ‘beyond railroads and internment.’ (Kim, 1995).

 2. For a sampling of this literature, see Hu-DeHart (1999), Anderson and Lee (2005), Jung (2006), Loewen (1988), Look Lai (1993), and Alatas (1977).

 3. As Viet Nguyen and Tina Chen have noted: ‘Asian America [and, I would argue, other sites of Asian diasporas] is a place that offers particular challenges for the application of postcolonial theory, given the uneven and sometimes contradictory histories of Asian Americans and their nations of origin. Some Asian American populations, such as Filipinos, Indians and Vietnamese, clearly come from histories defined by colonial and imperial warfare and exploitation conducted by the west. Others, such as Koreans and some Chinese, come from nations dominated by a neighbor – Japan. In contrast to these populations, many Asian Americans have no direct experience with imperialism and colonialism, except to the extent that their immigration or their ancestors' was a product of the global movement of culture and capital that is related to imperialism and colonialism. The contemporary outcome of this global development of capitalism is the contradictory fashion by which different Asian American populations are situated – some find their experiences profitable and liberatory, others find their experiences exploitative and compulsory.’ These experiences are ‘an integral part of any definition of a postcolonial condition.’ (Nguyen and Chen, 2000)

 4. See Alatas (1977) and discussion below.

 5. Also see Lye (2008a, 2008b).

 6. This strongly recalls Du Bois's characterization of the Black worker as having ‘neither wish nor power’ to share in the exploitation of others. The author thanks Fred Moten for directing his attention to this passage in a seminar discussion of AMST 520: Readings in Race and Ethnicity, Spring 2005, University of Southern California. The original passage in Du Bois reads: ‘Above all, we must remember the black worker was the ultimate exploited; that he formed that mass of labor which had neither wish nor power to escape from the labor status, in order to directly exploit other laborers, or indirectly, by alliance, with capital, to share in their exploitation’ (DuBois, [1935] 1998, 15).

 7. According to Carl Trocki, during the arrival of Europeans in Southeast Asia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Europeans did not significantly alter earlier systems. They adapted to local practices but also ‘distorted them only for their own purposes in certain specific areas. Their conquest of key port facilities such as Melaka and the construction of fortified “castle” towns there (and later in Manila and Batavia) actually quickened the pace of Chinese commerce in the region. Europeans were major customers for Chinese products, and they usually paid in cash. This was partly because they had nothing else to offer in exchange and partly because they possessed vast supplies of precious metals from the Americas….. Europeans, like Southeast Asian rulers, were content to allow Chinese to collect their taxes and manage many of their economic affairs, particularly those that involved contacts with other Chinese or Southeast Asians.’ (Trocki, 1997, 66)

 8. Also see Hu-DeHart (1999) and Hu-DeHart and Lopez (2008).

 9. Aihwa Ong's Flexible Citizenship (1999) is probably the most famous recent addition to the large body of literature on Chinese diasporas. Also see Ong and Nonini, Ungrounded Empires (1997) and Peach (1994).

10. Besides the obvious difference that ‘Asian’ typically means South Asian in Britain and East Asian in the USA, these groups have also been differentially positioned vis-à-vis Black and White in each national context. For a sampling of literature on the racial and class identity of British Asians (including South Asians as well as Chinese), see Allen (1971), Hiro (1971), Parker (1995), Brah (1996), Raj (2003), Shukla (2003), Benton and Gomez (2008), and Benson (1996). On Black identity and race relations more generally in Britain, see Alexander (1996), Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (1983), and Gilroy (1987). On the construction of whiteness in the British Empire, see Mohanram (2007).

11. For example, racist violence, formal and informal exclusion from the polity, and economic exploitation.

12. The New Otani, now called the Kyoto Grand Hotel, remains a nonunion hotel today.

13. Including the Japanese American National Coalition for Redress and Reparations (NCRR), Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates (KIWA), Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), and a group of UCLA students organized by Professor Glenn Omatsu.

14. For an overview of the struggle, see Davis (1996).

15. See Sa-I-Gu (1993), Abelmann and Lie (1995), and Gooding-Williams (1993).