In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

26 ASIANS ON THE RIM TRANSNATIONAL CAPITAL AND LOCAL COMMUNITY IN THE MAKING OF CONTEMPORARY ASIAN AMERICA Arif Dirlik An issue of AsianWeek in January 1996 contained two items that cogently illustrate the problem I would like to discuss in this chapter. One was an invited editorial by Matt Fong, California state treasurer and “one of the nation’s highest elected Asian American officials.” Entitled “From Gold Mountain to the Golden Door,” Fong’s editorial outlined his vision of making California into “the capital of the Pacific Rim.” He wrote, California’s strategic location, coupled with its huge and diverse economic base and available capital, make it an ideal gateway to the Pacific Rim to facilitate trade and capital flows between the Pacific and the rest of the world. California has the opportunity to lead the charge toward dramatically expanded global trade by developing its role as a financial services center to increase the sophistication , speed, volume, reliability, and cost-effectiveness of international commerce. Business, labor, government, and the academic community must aggressively work together to seize this opportunity and chart a new course for California. . . . As the global economy changes, we must provide a vision and take advantage of opportunities that will make California a better, more prosperous place in which to work, live and do business. California’s Golden Door to the Future is the Gateway to the Pacific Rim.1 The other was a news item about the appointment to a post with the California Department of Education of Henry Der, who had served as the executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action in San Francisco since 1974. The Superintendent of Education Delaine Eastin, who was able to appoint Der in spite of opposition from the office of Governor Pete Wilson, described Der as “progressive . . . dedicated to the community and to minorities . . . who’s not afraid to speak for the community.” Der himself stated that while his new job made it inappropriate for him to serve as a spokesperson for the Asian American community, “I’m so much rooted in this community that I’m not going to that new job to forget that I am an Asian American.” His concerns, however, transcended his Asian Americanness: “I firmly believe we must do everything possible to close the gap between the haves and the have-nots in American society . . . I feel very, very strongly that education is one strategy.”2 For AsianWeek, Fong and Der are equally illustrations of Asian American success , two of “50 Asian Americans who’ll make a difference in the new year.”3 But the success story also conceals deep contradictions that bear directly on our understanding of Asian America, and its meaning in the contemporary world, which is the problem I would like to discuss here. I am not concerned about Fong’s and Der’s political affiliations or about their trajectories as individuals.4 My concern, rather, is with their contrasting orientations, which are informed by quite different self-images as Asian Americans: the one looking out to the Pacific and the future, through the “Golden Door” of California; the other looking to communities rooted in California and their historical legacies, centered around but not restricted to Asian Americans. The difference is spatial, but not in an inert geographical sense (east-west), or even in the sense of spaces defined by national boundaries. The spaces in this case derive their meaning from associations that are quite contemporary in their implications, and the contradictions that they present: the global, and globalizing, spaces of transnational capital versus the local spaces of communities. Given the significant part that the ideal of community played in the formation of an Asian American consciousness historically, the spatial contradiction appears also as a temporal contradiction between a contemporary Asian American consciousness and the originary assumptions of Asian America. The contrast between the two orientations, I would like to suggest, is paradigmatic of fundamental contradictions that are essential to grasping contemporary Asian America as social and ideological formation. The contradiction between the global and the local as structuring moments in contemporary society is not exclusive to Asian America, which is also a reminder that the Asian American experience is but one instance of what is increasingly a common phenomenon not just in the United States but worldwide; the problem of Asian America as I conceptualize it is not a cultural or a regional problem but a problem in global...

Share