Hermeneutical Lens: Overcoming Orientalism

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Hermeneutical Lens Overcoming Orientalism

• Tim Tseng
• Logos Evangelical Seminary
• January 16, 2006

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history

• Those who cannot remember the past are condemned
  to repeat it.
• A country without a memory is a country of
  madmen.
• George Santayana (1863-1952), U.S. philosopher,
  poet. Life of Reason, 'Reason in Common Sense,'
  ch. 12 (1905-6)
• Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know
  Joseph. (Ex. 18)

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history of the Western gaze
Edward Said (1935-2003)
Orientalism
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history of the Western gaze

• Two sides of the same Orientalist coin (cf Gary
  Okihiro)

• Un-assimilable
• Forever Foreigner
• Heathen
• Exotic women
• Martial arts men
• Racialization
• Where do you come from?

• Assimilated
• Model Minority
• You dont speak with an accent!
• A color-blind multi-cultural world!
• Yeah!

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history of the Western gaze

• The Asian immigrant experience is different from
  European immigrant experience

• Ethnicity differs from Race
• Ethnicity individual choice
• Mary Waters, Ethnic Options
• Herbert Gans, Symbolic Ethnicity
• Race predetermined by society
• Robert Lee, Orientals
• Franklin Woo, Yellow

Racialization Forever Other
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history of the Western gaze

• Racialization
• Racial identity is fluid and can change over
  time, not an essentialized reality.
• Racial identity is formed vis-à-vis
  socio-political process.
• Specific tradition of anti-Asian writing,
  portrayal called Orientalism

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history of the Western gaze

• Forever Foreigner-Other Orientalist lens
• Emerging scientific racism (19th Cent)
• Court cases defining Chinese as a black race.
• Popular images of heathen Asians.
• Legislative history of exclusion and
  disenfranchisement.

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history of the Western gaze

• People v Hall (California, 1853)
• 1853 Ling Sing murdered, George W. Hall
  indicted.
• Oct. 4 day trial. Three Chinese and one white
  person testified. Missionary William Speer
  translates.
• Jurys verdict guilty
• Hall is to be hanged.

Charles J. McClain, In Search of Equality The
Chinese Struggle against Discrimination in
Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley University
of California, 1994)
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history of the Western gaze

• Defense appeals verdict on grounds that Chinese
  testimony was prohibited under Section 14 of
  state Criminal Proceedings Act
• No black or mulatto person, or Indian, shall be
  permitted to give evidence in favor of, or
  against, any white person.

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history of the Western gaze

• Chief Justice Hugh C. Murray
• conviction reversed. Basis?
• the American Indians and the Mongolian, or
  Asiatic, were regarded as the same type of the
  human species.
• Even if Chinese were not Indians, the word
  black understood to mean not-white.

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history of the Western gaze

• If Chinese were admitted to the witness stand, we
  would soon see them at the polls, in the jury
  box, upon the bench, and in our legislative
  halls.
• Danger Chinese mendacity is proverbial a
  racenature has marked as inferior, andincapable
  of progress or intellectual development beyond a
  certain point.

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history of the Western gaze
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history of the Western gaze
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history of the Western gaze

• Legislation that excluded and disenfranchised
• 1870 Chinese not permitted to naturalized -
  citizenship limited to Black and White.
• 1875 Page Act prohibited immigration of
  prostitutes
• 1882 Chinese Exclusion
• 1905 California prohibits intermarriage.
• 1906 San Francisco Board of Education excludes
  Japanese, Korean, and Chinese children from
  public school.
• 1913 California Alien Land Law
• 1924 Exclusion of Japanese and other Asians
• 1932 Exclusion of Filipinos

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history of the Western gaze

• 1941-1945 Japanese American Internment camps
  (Photos of Ansel Adams)

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history of the Western gaze
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history of the Western gaze

• Birth of Model Minority Orientalism
• Frank Boaz, Robert Park and the turn against
  scientific racism in social sciences. (Influenced
  by Protestant missionaries)
• 1943 Repeal of Chinese exclusion - 103/year
  allowed refugees
• 1965 Equal quota from Asia
• Changes since 1965 family, educational and
  economic preference

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history of the Western gaze

• Asians are assimilable!
• White Protestant missionary intervention
• In order to protect Asian immigrants from the
  charge that they were completely foreign, white
  Protestants argued that through their mission
  work, Asians couldbe assimilated.

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history of the Western gaze

• By becoming Christian, the heathen and Asian
  culture would be erased.

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history of the Western gaze

• By becoming Christian, a new American identity
  would be established - a model minority.

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history of the Western gaze

• Emergence of Assimilationist Ideology
• Rooted in Protestant home missiology.
• Substantiated by University of Chicago
  sociology (Robert Parks) 1920s-1960s
• Assimilation cycle
• contact--gt conflict --gt adjustment --gt
  assimilation (integration)

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history of the Western gaze

• In the 1950s Mainline Protestants eliminated
  language missions in the US. Why?
• Foreign missions curtailed.
• Immigration had slowed.
• Faith in assimilation and Asian American model
  minorities.
• Desire for racial integration.

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Limitations of the Assimilation Model

• Sociologists who invented it used the European
  experience as their template.
• The inevitable conclusion is a one-way
  assimilation into the dominant culture.
• Doesnt accurately address experience of racial
  minorities (e.g. Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians).

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American Defeats Kwan!
Wen-Ho Lee
Anti-Arab Violence
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Overcoming Orientalism
3. Post- Modern Colonial

• ForFor
• ModMin

• Lens of the Orientalist Express
• Modernity
• Imperialism Colonialism
• Racism
• Gender Socioeconomic inequity

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Overcoming Orientalism
3. Post- Modern Colonial

• Ethnic studies
• Retrieving Asian culture and histories d
• Diaspora
• Trans-Pacific
• Women and Asian cultures
• Western white allies

• The Post-man rings twice
• Anti-colonialism, justice, center v. margins.
• Giving voice to pluralism, multi-culturalism.