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Precarious Belongings

Precarious Belongings

Chih-ming Wang | Daniel PS Goh

(2017)

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Book Details

Abstract

In the midst of refugee crises, terrorist attacks and territorial disputes across the globe, nationalism remains a powerful force in generating affects of inclusion and exclusion. In Asia, inter-Asian migration, enabled and disrupted by a history of colonialism, capitalist globalization and political conflicts, has rendered the idea of nation as both politically distinct and culturally malleable.
Precarious Belongings: Affect and Nationalism in Asia explores the affective politics of Asian nationalism by addressing the entwined structures of precarious belonging and national feelings. Bringing together leading scholars it looks at how the reification of nationalism in social movements, popular sentiments, online groups, and cultural representation directs hatred towards migrant and minority groups across Asia. The book posits that nationalist affects are embedded in the politics of exclusion, and seeks to make room for precarious belongings in the transnational and multicultural present. It should be of interest to students and scholars interested in Asian Cultural Studies, transnationalism, migration and nationalism.
Asian nationalisms have often been discussed as state ideologies. The present volume rather discusses Asian nations as communal identities constituted by affects. Its demonstration of the seamless interweaving of love and hate in the operation of Asian nations is both fascinating and disturbing.
Kristen Nordhaug, Professor of Development Studies, Oslo and Akershus University College
Given the contemporary recrudescence of nationalism in varied forms across Europe, Asia, and North America, this publication is a timely one, providing significant insights from a wide variety of Asian perspectives.
Christopher Connery, Professor, World Literature and Cultural Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz
This illuminating collection offers grounded studies of experiences shaped by various nationalist moods being mobilised across Asia. It is also a riveting read for anyone anywhere concerned by the new forms of populism, civic disenchantment, ‘hate-loving’ speech, and digital militancy erupting now world-wide. Posing the question of conviviality in an age of precarity, this book helps us all to think.
Meaghan Morris, Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney
Relationships between affect and national identity are a crucial aspect of the critical perspectivism ushered in by contemporaneity. This book is an important contribution to knowledge of those relationships in Asian contexts.
Paul Gladston, Professor of Contemporary Visual Cultures and Critical Theory, University of Nottingham
Chih-ming Wang is Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica. He is the author of Transpacific Articulations: Student Migration and the Remaking of Asian America (University of Hawaii Press, 2013), and guest-editor of the “Asian American Studies in Asia” special issue of Inter-Asia Cultural Studies (2012).

Daniel PS Goh is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology at National University of Singapore, and the Convener of Cultural Studies Minor and Cultural Studies in Asia PhD Programme. He is the editor of Worlding Multiculturalisms (Routledge, 2015), and co-editor of Race and Multiculturalism in Malaysia and Singapore (Routledge, 2009).

Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Cover Cover 1
Half Title i
Series Information ii
Title Page iii
Copyright Page iv
Contents v
Introduction: Tracking the Affective Twists of Nationalisms in Asia vii
In The Name of Love vii
Nationalism and Precariousbelongings in Asia x
From Precarity to Conviviality xiii
The Digital Platform xv
Structure of the Book xvi
Notes xix
References xx
Part I The Dialectics of Love and Hate 1
Chapter One Complex Histories of the Foreign in Indonesia 3
The Occident 4
Anti-Chinese Sentiment 10
Ambiguity and Precarity 13
Notes 15
References 15
Chapter Two Hate-Loving Nation-State: Theorizing Asian Nationalist Affects 19
Progressive Use of Nationalist Affects? 21
Entanglement of Love and Hate 24
Affective Economy and Nation without State 27
Asianism of Gandhism and Maoism, and Emotional Capital 31
Notes 36
References 37
Chapter Three Introverted Jingoism in a Post-Imagined-Community Digital Era: The Upswings of Hate Speech Demonstration in Japan 39
Sociohistorical Contexts of the Rise of Nationalism and Jingoism 40
Cyber Right-Wingers (netto-uyoku) in Hate Speech Demonstration 44
Is it Nationalism or Jingoism? 47
Common Table in a Digital Age 50
Notes 53
References 54
Part II Precarious Belongings 57
Chapter Four “We Are Already Living Together”: Race, Collective Struggle, and the Reawakened Nation in Post-3/11 Japan 59
A Reawakened Nation 60
Race, Nation, and Disaster 64
Going Home 68
The Burdens of Protection 71
Conclusion 73
Acknowledgement 74
References 74
Chapter Five From the Outside: Performing Korean Diaspora, Redoing National Affiliation 77
Starting The Journey 77
Between History and the Present: Korean Diaspora Through Performance 79
About the Performance Venue and Beyond 85
Nationalistic Consensus in South Korea 89
Conclusion: Journey That Never Ends 91
Notes 92
References 93
Chapter Six Loyalty on Trial: Chinese-Filipinos and the West Philippine Sea Dispute 95
Historicizing Loyalty 97
Surveying Views on the Dispute 99
Does Self-Identifying as Filipinos Matter for National Affect 100
Whose Side Are Tsinoys On and What Do Others Think? 102
Respondents’ Own Views on the Dispute 103
Conclusion: Relitigating Loyalty? 107
Acknowledgement 108
Notes 108
References 109
Part III Affected Selves 115
Chapter Seven “Freedom is Elsewhere”: Circulating Affect and Aversion for Asian and Islamic Others in Indonesia 117
Indonesian Inter-Asia Labor Migrations in Context 119
Circulating Aversion: Reaffirming Javanese and Indonesian Selves 121
Circulating Affection: Rethinking the Ethno-National Boundaries of Kinship 124
Negotiating and Remaking Gendered “Indonesianness” 127
Conclusion 130
Notes 132
References 132
Chapter Eight “Let’s Save the Nation from Being Anti-Multicultural!”: The Emergence of the Anti-Multiculturalist Movements in South Korea 137
“Multicultural” Discourses as Racialization 139
Emergence of Anti-multiculturalism as a Patriotic Aspiration 144
Spread of Racism and the “Stateless” State 148
Conclusion 149
References 150
Chapter Nine “Feels so Foreign in My Own Homeland”: Xenophobia and National Identity in Singapore 153
Singapore as an Immigrant Nation 154
Everyday Encounters with New Immigrants 156
Hot Points in the Current Immigration Debate 159
Conclusion 164
References 166
Chapter Ten Becoming a Revanchist City: Reflections on Hong Kong Nativist Affects 169
Making Boundaries Between Hong Kong and China 170
Disempowerment 173
Empowerment and Spatial Governance 176
In Pursuit of Different Forms of Power 179
Note 182
References 182
Part IV The Specter of China 185
Chapter Eleven Image-Driven Nationalism: Visuality, Digital Platform, and Generation Post-1980s 187
Introduction 187
Image-Driven Nationalism: an Overview 188
Generation Post-1980s 193
Overseas Students and the Limits of E-Learning 196
Conclusion 199
Notes 200
References 200
Chapter Twelve Sydney’s Chinatown and the Rise of China 203
Sydney’s Chinatown: From Ethnic Enclave to Icon of Multiculturalism 207
Globalization of the Chinatown idea 212
Conclusion 215
Acknowledgement 216
References 216
Conclusion: The Geopolitical Unconsciousof Inter-Asia 219
References 224
Index 225
About the Authors 233