Coda
Coda 180 Each chapter of Inhuman Citizenship ends with an allusion to a heart or a secret kernel. In chapter 1, I call for an embedding of Ona’s heart in our own, so that we may participate in Bone’s project of animating what is otherwise left behind. Chapter 2 considers how imperial jouissance bequeaths to the Filipino family the secret and alien heart of the nation. To be deemed worthy of citizenship and love, the immigrant in chapter 3 must offer his heart to the nation. Finally, as if to undo all the foregoing work of imagination and interpretation, chapter 4 culminates in a dissipation , in which the secret kernel of the Park family is dissolved. We may wish for endings to provide closure, but we wish even more for an afterlife, a continuing resonance. With these four figures—the reanimating heart, the alien heart, the sacrificial heart, and the dissolving heart—I hope to suggest both the reverberations of the racial inhuman and the void of jouissance. In this coda, my intention is to echo these four chapters by considering how racial jouissance itself recurs, rebounds, and spreads. In The Melancholy of Race, Anne Cheng recalls that whenever she mentioned in conversation that she was writing about the film Flower Drum Song, her interlocutor, regardless of race, ethnicity, or gender, would invariably burst into his or her rendition of the musical number “I Enjoy Being a Girl.”1 How might we think about the infectiousness of this song, whose referent is the exuberant performance by the Asian American actress Nancy Kwan? Why is the automatic response to hearing about the film not intellectual or narrative discourse, but rather the reembodiment of a showstopping spectacle and recital? Put another way, what does it mean that these various conversation partners were de-individualized in their momentary possession by a fictional Asian American woman, the coda 181 character of Linda Low?2 And why is it enjoyment—an enjoyment of femininity that is explicitly cited in the song title—that is so infectious? At first glance, Linda Low appears to perfectly embody the fantasy of early 1960s, Cold War national femininity. The abundance of postwar American prosperity means that she has the resources and the leisure time to alternate easily between several fashionable outfits and hairdos. She coyly and directly solicits men’s attention through flirtation and entertainment . She even takes part in a tableau of space-age futuristic domesticity , pressing a button to automatically make orange juice and toast for her imagined husband. What I want to highlight, however, is the way that femininity in Flower Drum Song forms yet another vector of the racial inhuman and traumatic enjoyment that emerge from family business.3 Femininity is represented as consummate artifice in the musical number ’s song lyrics, costuming, and performance. Linda sings with delight of a “brand new hairdo,” “my eyelashes all in curls,” and talking on the telephonewith “apoundandahalfofcreamuponmyface.”Asshetakesabreak from singing, she replicates into three mirror images, so that she can watch herself simultaneously don a frilly dress, a ball gown, and a bikini in her mirrors, each with their appropriately formal or fun hairstyles. This production of serious femininity recalls other lines in the film that link racial femininity to the production of machines: “Right off the assembly line! Not a scratch on her! They don’t make ’em that way over here anymore.”4 Linda declares herself “strictly a female female.” This strong adherence to gender norms again posits femininity as artifice. Paradoxically, however, such bondage to femininity also appears to unleash enjoyment. The lyrics to “I Enjoy Being a Girl” express feminine pleasures as extravagances that can barely be contained: swiveling and swerving her hips, flipping over flowers from a “fella,” “drooling” with delight over dresses made of lace. Cheng argues that Linda’s performance “exceeds the boundaries . . . of a proper joy.” Rather, Linda’s joy is “uncontainable.”5 Her enjoyment spreads to her spectators and listeners, who cannot suppress their desire to sing. What can we make of this irrepressibility and uncontainability of traumatic enjoyment? The distinction between affect and emotion helps to explain the infectiousness of jouissance. Both affect and emotion refer to states of feeling , but affect is generally conceived of as more inchoate, less formed, not clearly legible or narratable. Because of this formlessness, affect is also less attached to particular subjects.6 Emotion, by contrast, is felt as belonging to [3.16.81.94] Project MUSE (2024-04...
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