National Abjection: The Asian American Body on Stage (review)

For the past decade, we have seen a burgeoning of scholarly production in Asian American theater and performance studies. Archival and theoretical projects on Asian American theater and performance simultaneously developed at the end of the twentieth century.¹ In one decade, we witnessed the publication of groundbreaking anthologies like Between Worlds, edited by Misha Berson, Politics of Life, edited by Velina Hasu Houston, and Unbroken Thread, edited by Roberta Uno. Other publications include collections of Asian American theater work such as Asian American Drama, edited by Brian Nelson, Tokens, edited by Alvin Eng, and But Still, Like Air, I'll Rise, also by Velina Hasu Houston. The presence of Asian American theater work in such recently emergent multi-genre literature anthologies like Bold Words edited by Rajini Srikanth and Esther Iwanaga also testify to the liveliness of the field. At the same time, scholarly publications of and that include Asian American theater and performance began to proliferate: James Moy's Marginal Sights, Josephine Lee's Performing Asian America, Dorinne Kondo's About Face, Yuko Kurahashi's Asian American Culture on Stage, Una Chaudhuri's Staging Place, and Meiling Cheng's In Other Los Angeleses, are among the most notable of such critical studies.

A welcome addition to the expanding list of scholarly inquiry into the Asian American stage is Karen Shimakawa's National Abjection: The Asian American Body on Stage. National Abjection is an important intervention, primarily in the fields of performance/theater studies and Asian American Studies. While Shimakawa deploys a range of theories including postcolonial theory and theories of globalization, it is Julia Kristeva's notion of "abjection" that is the primary theoretical anchor grounding her analysis of Asian American work. Shimakawa's coupling of the psychoanalytic dimension of the "abject" with U.S. racial formation and national concerns enriches the possibilities for interpreting and understanding Asian American theater, performance, and arguably Asian American cultural production in general.²

"Abjection," as defined by Kristeva and deployed in this text by Shimakawa, is "a state and a process," "a national/cultural identity-forming process, as a way of 'reading' Asian Americanness in relation and as a product of U.S. Americanness—that is, as occupying the seemingly contradictory, yet functionally essential, position of consistent element and radical other" (3). In other words, the deployment of "abjection" to understand Asian Americanness helps us to see the place of Asian Americans in U.S. (cultural, political, and social) hegemony, and illuminates Asian Americanness, albeit produced as abject, as constitutive of U.S. nation formation. Shimakawa's discussion of various works by Asian American theater artists, including Yankee Dawg You Die by Phillip Kan Gotanda, 12-1-A by Wakako Yamauchi, The Year of the Dragon and Chickencoop Chinaman by Frank Chin, Talk-Story by Jeannie Barroga, Tea by Velina Hasu Houston, and Deshima and Chinoiserie by Ping Chong, elucidates her thesis of Asian American abjection.

In her introduction, Shimakawa analyses critical historical moments in Asian American history to delineate how Asian Americans have been made abject within the U.S. national context. Her discussion of the internment of Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans in World War II and the U.S. government's denial of citizenship (and hence benefits) to Filipinos who fought for the U.S. government in World War II sets up her argument of Asian Americans as abject vis-a-vis U.S. nation formation. This engagement with historical events is important given the underlying questions that animate National Abjection: "what is the connection between histories of nationalization/racialization/gendering, and theatrical performance? What can being attentive to the processes of national abjection tell us about performances that take place within the nation? Conversely, what can performance tell us about national abjection? And perhaps most important, what can performance do to/about that process?" (163).

Throughout her analysis of the very emergence of contemporary Asian American theater and various play texts, Shimakawa decisively demonstrates how Asian American artists have mobilized the...