Self-Orientalism and inter-imperiality in Anna Kazumi Stahl’s Flores de un solo día

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the contemporary meanings and functions of self-Orientalism in the Argentine context by analyzing Anna Kazumi Stahl’s novel, Flores de un solo día (2002). The issue of self-Orientalism entails a double intrigue at the individual and collective levels: first, why cultural producers of Asian descent (the ‘Orientalized’) replicate Orientalism; and second, why Orientalism, in its various forms, proliferates in Latin America despite the region’s own marginalized position. Examining Flores de un solo día both within Argentina’s specific context and as part of a global phenomenon of literary self-Orientalism or autoexoticism, this paper argues that the novel self-Orientalizes in order to betray contemporary readers’ expectations for facile resolutions to imperialist Orientalism. Applying Laura Doyle’s framework of ‘inter-imperiality’ we examine how Flores de un solo día ‘writes back’ to multiple empires by tracing Orientalism’s trajectories – from Japan to the United States and Argentina – and by weaving the lingering effects of imperialism from before Columbus to the present. The paper further argues that despite these counterhegemonic effects, the novel reveals its own shifting position as it moves in and out of hegemonic power.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-Orientalism
• re-Orientalism
• autoexoticism
• inter-imperiality
• Anna Kazumi Stahl
• Asians in Argentina

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Data on immigrant populations vary, with estimates on Chinese immigrants that range from 100,000 to 200,000. Community leaders maintain that the higher estimates are more accurate. Scholars attribute these discrepancies to limited government data, lack of self-reporting and the conflation of Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants (Grimson, Ng, and Denardi 2016, 33–34). A good indication of the fast-paced growth of these communities are the more than 80 Chinese and Taiwanese ethnic organizations operating today; see Grimson, Ng, and Denardi (2016).

2. For an examination of Argentina’s multicultural turn and the position of Asian Argentines in it, see Ko (2014).

3. See Pew Research Center (2013) for said study. These studies are carried out annually by the Pew Research Center to compare the global perception of United States and China.

4. All translations in this article are my own.

5. The invasion trope can be traced back to the founding of the nation: from the fear of indigenous raids to the ‘aluvión inmigratorio’(immigration wave) in the nineteenth century. In the mid-twentieth century, elites perceived a new kind of ‘invaders’ with the rise of Juan D. Perón and his dark-skinned, working-class supporters. The rise of the Peronist popular class was dubbed the ‘aluvión zoológico’ (zoological wave). The trope of invasion has been applied subsequently to other non-elite or non-white groups – from the generic working-class ‘negro’ to diverse immigrant groups. For an analysis of the topic of ‘invasion’ in Argentine literature from Peronism to 2001, see Ledesma (2012). See Carbajal (2006) on the myth of the invasion of immigrants from neighboring countries. See Courtis (2000) for a study on the representation of Koreans – as invaders and slave-holders – by the media in the 1990s.

6. For an examination of the ironic uses of Orientalism in contemporary Argentine and Latin American literature, see Holmes (2008), Hoyos (2010), Fernández Bravo (2015), and Ko (2015).

7. See Ko (2016a) for an analysis of the representation of Asians in the films Un cuento chino (Borensztein 2011), Samurai (Scheuer 2012), and Mujer conejo (Chen 2013).

8. See Ong (1993) on the use of self-Orientalism by the transnational cosmopolitan elite to recode Asians as ‘new authority figures’ in late capitalism. See Dirlik (1996) on the uses of self-Orientalism in contemporary East Asia as a form of ‘newly-acquired power’ and as a new force for modernity replacing a weakened Western modernity. For an examination of how Confucianist values – once a sign of ‘backwardness and a failure to modernize’ – are re-articulated by Asian Americans as the basis of a new order of capitalism and this group’s special role as cultural and economic bridge-builders, see Hu-DeHart (2000).

9. See Ko (2015) on the representation of Asians in the novels Un chino en bicicleta (2007) by Ariel Magnus and María Domecq (2007) by Juan Forn.

10. For a detailed analysis of Argentina’s emerging discourses of multiculturalism in the context of the 2001 economic crisis, see Ko (2014).

11. For an analysis of César Aira’s novels with Asian themes, see Fernández Bravo (2015) and Hoyos (2010).

12. This question reformulates Chow’s observation regarding an East Asia that was not, strictly speaking, colonized by the West: ‘The question is not how East Asia cannot be understood within the paradigm of Orientalism because it was not militarily occupied, but how, in spite of and perhaps because of the fact that it remained “independent” it offers even better illustrations of how imperialism works’ (2010a, 36).

13. For an examination of the presence of ‘three worlds’ (Japan, the United States, and Hispanic America) in Stahl’s work, see Lattanzi (2013). See also Geirola (2005) for an analysis of three Asian-Latin American texts that destabilize hyphenated identities.

14. See Martinetto (2006) for an examination of Stahl’s decision to write in an ‘adopted’ language and an intricate analysis of the significance of languages (Japanese, English, and Spanish) in Flores de un solo día.

15. See Alberto and Hoffnung-Garskoff (2018) for a historical and hemispheric examination of the idea of a Latin American ‘racial democracy’ which was ‘codified as a contrast with the United States.’

16. See Geler (2016, 218–220) for a succinct and illuminating discussion of the processes by which the ‘the racial dimension’ was expelled ‘from the realm of the explicit’ yet racial ideas were recoded into a ‘“way of being” associated with the lower classes.’

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Chisu Teresa Ko

Chisu Teresa Ko is an Associate Professor of Spanish and Coordinator of the Latin American Studies Program at Ursinus College. She specializes in Argentine cultural and racial studies with an emphasis on Asian Argentines. She is currently working on a book project titled Argentina: Race in a Raceless Nation.