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Introduction: Developing a Critical Perspective on Power in Literature
- University Press of Mississippi
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3 introduction Developing a Critical Perspective on Power in Literature Even in the growing body of work devoted to AfroAsian studies, very few scholars mention, let alone focus on, “Yellow Power.” Much of this scholarship is preoccupied with black and Asian cooperation in radical political movements, in particular the nonalignment or “Third World” movement initiated at the conference of nonaligned countries held in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955. A spate of books and anthologies, among them Bill Mullen’s Afro-Orientalism (2004); Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting:Afro-AsianConnectionsandtheMythofCulturalPurity (2002) by Vijay Prashad; Writing Manhood in Black and Yellow: Ralph Ellison, Frank Chin, and the Literary Politics of Identity (2005) by Daniel Kim; and the collections AfroAsian Encounters: Culture, History, Politics (2006), edited by Heike Raphael-Hernandez and Shannon Steen, and Afro Asia: RevolutionaryPoliticalandCulturalConnectionsbetweenAfricanAmericansand Asian Americans (2006), edited by Fred Ho and Bill Mullen, are all bent on illuminating an often overlooked or misunderstood history of black and Asian cultural and political commerce. Most of these studies seek to recuperate a shared social history that challenges binaristic constructions of race, as well as the conventional wisdom that presumes a longstanding antagonism between African Americans and Asian Americans. As a result, much of this work is as intent on recovering, remembering, and recouping as, with a couple of notable exceptions, moving towards a cultural studies hermeneutic for the comparative analysis of these texts. Often, many of these works rely on a narrow range of interpretive mechanisms, evaluating AfroAsian relationships as examples of productive providence, or instances of more or less successful coalition building. This project attempts to address both gaps: providing yet another piece of the puzzle of this fascinating time in American near history and culture, while exploring the value of “Power” as a hermeneutic born of the web of social, historical, and cultural interactions, 4 Introduction influences, and cooperations that characterize black and Asian interethnic interactions in America in order to complicate binaristic notions of race beyond black and white and provide the basis for an indigenous American comparative ethnic cultural studies. To accomplish this goal, my work joins the work of others like Vijay Prashad, Robin D. G. Kelley, Laura Pulido, and Daryl Maeda in developing interpretive schema for cross-cultural and comparative AfroAsian analysis that account for the discursive nature of ideological and cultural productions and are based in readings of the radical political discourse of the period.1 In Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting, Prashad offers the concept of the “polycultural,” which he defines as “a provisional concept grounded in antiracism rather than diversity. Polyculturalism, unlike multiculturalism, assumes that people live coherent lives that are made up of a host of lineages—the task of the historian is not to carve out the lineages but to make sense of how people live culturally dynamic lives. Polyculturalism is a ferocious engagement with the political world of culture, a painful embrace of the skin and all its contradictions”2 (xii). His study goes on to trace a history, ancient and modern, of AfroAsian political, social, and cultural interactions that blur the boundaries between black and yellow to shake up the easy notions of contemporary “identity politics” that allow white supremacy to continue. Likewise, I locate a polyvalent sense of identity and struggle in “Power”; just as it provided a powerful organizing metaphor for African Americans, it also afforded Asian American audiences a staging ground for a panethnic identification while gesturing towards other nonwhite groups also struggling against the effects of white racism both in America and abroad.3 Another notable exception is Robin D. G. Kelley and Betsy Esch, who in “Black Like Mao,” look to Mao and Maoism not just as an interesting historical footnote, but as one of the major influences of the development of Black Power. Drawing on the series of interactions and exchanges between Mao and early black radicals, the pair posits the idea of “black Maoism” to explain the consolidation of Black Power ideology.Theauthorswrite,“CentraltoMaoismistheideathatMarxism can be (must be) reshaped to the requirements of time and place, and that practical work, ideas, and leadership stem from the masses in movement and not from a theory created in the abstract or produced out of others struggles.”4 In this sense, Black Power represents a necessary adaption of the insights of Mao, Guevara, Fanon, and others in [44.201.131.213] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 19:19 GMT) Introduction 5 order to formulate an ideological apparatus suitable...