National Abjection: The Asian American Body Onstage (review)

National Abjection by Karen Shimakawa is the latest addition to the small but growing field of scholarship in Asian American theatre and performance. The book provides critical analysis of a number of Asian American "performed texts" since the 1970s by applying current theories of culture, race, and performance. The primary theoretical framework of the book is Julia Kristeva's concept of abjection, which Shimakawa rearticulates to examine the tensions between "Asian Americanness" and "Americanness." Abjection is, for Kristeva and Shimakawa, "the condition/position of that which is deemed loathsome and the process by which that appraisal is made" (3). When applied to the formation of national identity, abjection functions as a "frontier" that marks the boundaries of cultural citizenship and national ontology. Shimakawa posits that Asian Americanness functions as abject in relation to Americanness because the two occupy the "seemingly contradictory, yet functionally essential, position of constituent element and radical other" (3). In short, Asian Americans, both on- and offstage, embody the contradictory desire to be accepted as Americans but also to be different and unassimilated.

Shimakawa is interested in the function and efficacy of performance as it contributes to the productions of Asian Americanness. And she pays particular attention to the negotiation between "the poles of abject visibility/stereotype/foreigner and invisibility/assimilation (to whiteness)" (160). What shapes the five chapters in the book is this focus on the tensions between visibility and invisibility in both theatrical performance and identity formation. For instance, the first chapter provides an insightful examination of the casting controversy surrounding the musical Miss Saigon, which initially featured a white actor in yellowface makeup. Shimakawa concludes that the controversy erupted in the first place because Asian Americanness was not visible and thus culturally unintelligible. Based on personal interviews and close textual readings, the subsequent chapters describe and analyze how Asian American theatre artists have fought to make themselves visible by founding theatre companies, writing original plays, and challenging the process of abjection in mainstream theatre and culture. In case studies, she briefly describes the histories of Asian American theatre companies in chapter 2 and, in chapters 3 and 4, examines a number of published plays, including Wakako Yamauchi's 12-1-A, Elizabeth Wong's Letters to a Student Revolutionary, Frank Chin's Year of the Dragon and The Chickencoop Chinaman, Velina Hasu Houston's Tea, Jeannie Barroga's Talk-Story, Philip Kan Gotanda's Yankee Dawg You Die, and David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly.

Shimakawa's analysis of the plays reinforces her argument that Asian Americanness is produced and negotiated through the process of national abjection and that the Asian American body marks the boundaries of what constitutes Americanness. Furthermore, her focus on the visual aspects of theatre and identity leads to broad incorporation of theories of subjectivity, representation, and embodiment, such as those formulated by Homi Bhabha, Lisa Lowe, Luce Irigaray, and Judith Butler. For example, upon applying Butler's "critical mimesis" to her examination of Houston's Tea and Hwang's M. Butterfly, Shimakawa suggests that Asian American playwrights have offered a "partial response" to the questions of visibility and intelligibility by self-consciously (and sometimes playfully) experimenting with the process of abjection. The last chapter investigates Ping Chong's Deshima and Chinoiserie, two performance pieces in his "East-West Quartet" series. Shimakwa contextualizes Chong in the contemporary movement of globalization and transnationalism and argues that his characters "reembod[y] history in order to embody it differently" (22). Unlike other Asian American theatre artists who responded to national formulations of abjection, Chong, according to Shimakawa, provides a "re-vision" by redefining the Asian American body in a transnational framework.

Shimakawa's purpose is to examine "performed texts as opposed to dramatic literature." She does not discuss the plays as any specific staged productions, nor does she approach the texts historically; rather, she focuses on the theoretical possibilities of how the Asian American body can be staged, reimagined, and made culturally intelligible in performance. Indeed, her...