Annotation: Rachel Adams’ “The Ends of America, the Ends of Postmodernism” (2007)

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Adams, Rachel. “The Ends of America, the Ends of Postmodernism.” Twentieth Century Literature: A Scholarly and Critical Journal. 53.3 (2007): n. pag. Web. 12 Sept. 2010.

In this essay Adams asserts that postmodernism is giving away to a new phase of American literature, where authors pointedly explore the effects of globalization in a multicultural, transnational context beyond the borders of the US nation-state. She explicitly compares Pynchon’s canonical postmodern work, The Crying of Lot 49, with Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange, which she asserts is reflective of this new American literary globalism. She notes that unlike traditional postmodernist works, this emerging group of contemporary American writers are often immigrants themselves or come from an immigrant background and while they may rely on some familiar postmodernist forms they distinguish themselves through their acute concern about “the vast inequities, economic interconnections, and movement of people and goods associated with globalization” (print 2). Adams explains that Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 and Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange are apt for comparison because both novels take place in California and posit Mexico as a significant player in shaping US socioeconomic politics and identity.

She asserts that Pynchon presents California as:

a place that values superficiality over depth…where neighborhoods and downtowns have been eradicated in favor of vast, sprawling networks of freeway, and where faceless new information industries have made workers ever more alienated from the products of their labor (print 5)

Adams describes how the novel is characterized by an overwhelming sense of Cold War paranoia, political exhaustion and disillusionment towards potential for progress. Mexico just signifies another dead end, “adding to the clutter of signs whose meaning may amount to no more than endless deferral and information overload” (print 7).

Adams argues that Yamashita deliberately diverges from this representation of California as an entirely superficial, materialistic, alienating and dead city. Tropic of Orange conversely presents California as “a nodal point where globalization threatens to erupt into environmental and human catastrophe, but also where people find themselves creating unlikely coalitions that might work to remedy these problems” (print 3). While Adams admits that the Hypercontext Grid that prefaces the actual narrative offers readers a misleading sense of order, she emphasizes that characters such as Gabriel come to accept that chaos by “recognizing its likeness to the ubiquitous technology of the internet” (print 9). She notes that Emi is the character most deeply connected with the Internet and communications technology in the novel. Bitter and sarcastic, with little regard for the past or cultural diversity as a model for the future, Emi, Adams asserts, is representative of the traditional postmodern antihero. She further argues that Emi’s “unsentimental elimination” in Tropic of Orange suggests that the future has no place for such a character and “belongs instead to characters like Gabriel or the community organizer Buzzworm, who are both more respectful of the past and willing to harbor utopian visions of the future” (print 9).

Adams also notes how Yamashita diverges from the consideration of Cold War geopolitics of many postmodernist works, aligning the geographic and topographical shifts in her novel to “the massive demographic and perspectival shifts introduced by contemporary globalization and linked to the long history of conquest and colonization in the Americas” (print 10). She further emphasizes that Yamashita presents a vision where “America’s future is tied to Latin America and Asia” (print 10). Contrary to Pynchon’s representation of Mexico, Adams describes how Yamashita’s configuration of US-Mexico relations directly alludes to economic policies such as NAFTA and CAFTA (print 11).

She additionally discusses how this hemispheric focus is reflected in the very form of Yamashita’s novel, which employs a “creative fusion of Latin American-inspired magical realism with allusions to such Anglo-American sources as hard-boiled detective fiction and Hollywood film” (print 11). In addition to the movement of Southern people to the North and geographic border shifts, Tropic of Orange dramatizes the “melding of Northern and Southern cultural forms…evident in the novel’s structure, which vacillates between the linear, goal-oriented model of plot development of the Anglo-American detective novel and cyclical understandings of time indebted to Amerindian sources such as the Mayan codices” (print 11).

Adam emphasizes that Yamashita deliberately presents the voices and perspectives of racially marked characters that have been traditionally marginalized, silenced, or omitted from the historical archive. She notes that while globalization has “resulted in the dispersal and intensification of economic disparities,” it also opens up new possibilities for resistance and protest. Adams particularly points to the bands of homeless people who take over the abandoned cars on the LA freeway that have been entirely gridlocked by a major traffic accident. These individuals essentially create a functional society with its own system of order. She emphasizes that “the dreaded gridlock does not bring urban life to an end. Instead, the crisis forces people to see and feel the city differently, as they experience it by foot” (print 13). Adams accentuates that this a significant difference between Yamashita and Pynchon because the characters in Tropic of Orange do not become completely immobilized or wallow over their total lack of agency. She admits that the ending is rather ambiguous as Gran Mojado dies in his final match with SUPERNAFTA but notes that this defeat is matched “with the reunion of a truly global family—the Singaporean Bobby, Mexican Rafaela, and their son Sol,” which offers readers some sense of hope for the future (print 13).

Adams finally concludes her essay by expressing her enthusiasm over this new global shift in American literature, characterized by “the recent realignment of the field’s geographic parameters to reflect multiple Americas that are more mobile and expansive than the borders of the US nation-state” (print 14).

Oh sorry meant to point out the the (print #) citations are for my own personal reference because I pasted the essay into a word document. I just wanted an easier way to locate quotes and such. ^^

Annotation: Johannes Hauser’s “Structuring the Apokalypse” (2006)

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Hauser, Johannes. “Structuring the Apokalypse: Chaos and Order in Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange. Philologie im Netz. 37 (2006): 1-32. Print.

In this essay Hauser asserts that Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange exhibits apocalyptic features as a narrative “of a world on the brink of border-defying chaos” (3). He calls attention to the literal topographical shifts in the novel that destroy national boundaries, re-erecting them in new locales. But in spite of this seeming chaos, Hauser argues that Yamashita presents a very structured novel. “Chaos and order” are therefore “not only opposing poles; they are parts of the representation of a reality” where readers must grapple with an aesthetic of instability, constant movement, and transformation, which are characteristic of the contemporary globalized world (4).

For the purposes of my own research Hauser’s discussion of “Technological identities” is particularly relevant (6). Hauser asserts that Emi adopts an anti-identity politics where she anxiously attempts to present herself someone as far from a stereotypical Asian American female as possible. Yet Hauser notes that her extreme anti-identitarian stance only reinforces her “veritable fear of ‘falling’ into any category” (6). He suggests that Emi turns to “modern computer and communication technologies” in her attempt to fashion a non-ethnic identity (7). But Hauser emphasizes that she merely emerges as an “ethnic cyborg,” where “her behavior is simultaneously deeply invested in paradigms of ethnic ascription and of technological progress” (7). He goes on to describe how Tropic of Orange presents a world run by “[i]nformation technology,” where the media scrambles to report exciting news and people rabidly consume that information as they are continuously bombarded with more updates (8). Hauser accentuates that despite Emi’s efforts to fashion a “non-identitarian identity” by relying on information technologies, that media “is not free of ideological content, its potential to distribute contents on a mass scale allows it to spread engendered and racializing categories globally” (7, 8). He asserts that because of her hatred for the corporate multiculturalism that ethnically brands her, Emi is compelled to establish an almost organic, biological relationship with media technologies which places her in an even more precarious situation as she becomes “defenseless against their contents, be it a multinational marketing campaign, the accentuation of consumerism, or abusive ethnic and racial stereotypes” (10).

In contrast to Emi, Hauser notes how Gabriel exhibits a kind of “ethnic nostalgia” (11). He notes how Gabriel attempts to construct a vacation home in Mexico, which he imagines to be an exotic space that simultaneously connects him to his ethnic roots. But Hauser emphasizes that Gabriel actually establishes a kind of colony in Mexico, introducing foreign trees to an environment that will not support their growth. He ultimately suggests that “Gabriel’s nostalgia creates spaces which are as unreal – and as compromising – as Emi’s technophilian cyberspace’ (12). Hauser significantly notes how Gabriel eventually gets drawn into virtual reality all together by the end of the novel.

Hauser goes onto describe the magical realist elements of Yamashita’s narrative, suggesting that “Magical realism defines a highly complex spatial representation in the novel… It breaks up causal linearity which sets this narrative mode into analogy with the moving tropic and the transition in geography” (14). He also makes a provocative observation about the magical realist moment where “Rafaela meets Bobby in her dream” in which the “vision, the situation and the scenery bear a resemblance to cyberspace in their barren emptiness and the cyber-sexual implications” (14).

In his essay Hauser not only describes how Yamashita blurs the borders between transnational and local spaces but also the distinction between the biological and technological. He notes how human beings are presented as machine-like workers, while the organ trade treats human organs as spare mechanical parts. Hauser asserts that this “blurring of the boundary between organic life and man-made technology” is both a reflection of the effects of globalization as well as popular works of science fiction and cyberpunk. He calls attention to some potentially problematic discourses and representations, suggesting that “[i]f machines are like organic beings, human beings can also be treated like mechanical objects” (17). Hauser then goes on to describe Manzanar’s vision of LA as an organic, “cyborg city, partly human, partly machine” (25).

He finally concludes his essay with a pointed discussion of how the structure of Yamashita’s novel, which deliberately encourages “reflective activity on the part of the reader” (28). Hauser asserts that Hypercontext Grid at the beginning of the narrative is a kind of map Yamashita gives her readers “with which to ‘drive’ in the book” (28).

Annotation: Rachel C. Lee’s “An Asian American Cultural Production in Asian-Pacific Perspective” (1999)

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Lee, Rachel C. “Asian American Cultural Production in Asian-Pacific Perspective.” Boundary 2. 26.2. (1999): 231-254. Print.

Lee begins her essay discussing how Asian American scholars must grapple with the pressures of globalization to reconcile the field’s foundational US-centric national focus with transnational forces and concerns. She notes how Asia-Pacific Rim scholars also assert the need to explore “the meanings of Asian American cultural production to the formation of alternative imagined communities ‘created by travel and trade, and…mobilized in dispersion’ rather than primarily through settlement within individual nation-states” (232). In her essay Lee specifically explores Karen Tei Yamashita’s novel Through the Arc of the Rain Forest, which she argues speaks directly to these field contentions.

She begins by offering helpful background on how the concept of “Pacific Rim” was initially derived as foil to NAFTA. Lee notes that while Pacific Rim evokes a definite geographic locale, it is “defined by an economic logic specifically designed to transgress national borders,” thereby “undermin[ing] the persuasiveness of territorial nationalism (235). Lee goes on to cite a passage from What Is in a Rim? Critical Perspectives on the Pacific Region Idea where Arif Dirlik argues that in the Pacific region, “[e]mphasis on human activity shifts attention from physical area to the construction of geography through human interactions” (236). For the purposes of my own paper, I argue that this is particularly true with respect to Yamashita’s other novel Tropic of Orange, where “human interactions” shaped by political and economic forces such as NAFTA precipitate the literal morphing of the geographic topography of the Americas.

In her discussion of Through the Arc of the Rainforest Yamashita asserts that the novel is a “respons[e] to the unsettling effects of globalization or time-space compression” (238). Lee relies on Doreen Massey’s definition of “time-space compression” which she describes as the “movement and communication across space, to the geographic stretching-out of social relations, and our experience of all this” (238). Lee notes how Yamashita sets her novel in Metacão, a fictional territory that calls attention to the fiction of geographic borders in general, especially in a globalized world where transnational flows and exchanges repeatedly transgress those boundaries. Lee suggests that borders are then merely political national constructions used to regulate the flows of capital, people, goods, culture, etc. She calls attention to how “heterogeneous national, racial and cultural components” converge at Metacão, which is represented through a highly diverse cast of characters. Lee emphasizes how Yamashita takes pains to depict “globalization as a multiform” rather than exchanges between the East and West.

Elaborating on the novel’s relation to Asian American studies, Lee asserts that the Japanese immigrant character, Kazumasa Ishimaru emerges as “a subtle parody of a familiar archetype, the Chinese American railroad worker” (242). Lee discusses how Asian American scholars have traditionally deployed this history of Chinese immigrant involvement in the construction of the transcontinental railroad as an argument for Asian American enfranchisement and belonging in the US. She claims that by reworking this archetype, from Chinese to Japanese immigrant and manual track laborer to more advanced position of railroad technician and inspector, Yamashita articulates the need and means for shifting the field of Asian American studies from a narrow national perspective to trans- and even post-national considerations. Lee writes:

[I]n a time when national utitilies are fragmenting into competing capitalist units, when building the infrastructure is less important than downsizing to maximize profits, when railways signify less as patriotic achievements and more as a ‘lucrative travel business,’ crafting a national hero is to create a deliberate anachronism, a figure who, despite having saved ‘hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives’ (TAR, 10), is outplaced.” (245)

Lee emphasizes that Yamashita does not entirely abandon the history of the railroad but rather demonstrates how its construction and the act of laboring on the railroad is infused with new meaning and implications within a contemporary globalized context.

She asserts that this Japanese immigrant character’s presence alongside a multicultural, multinational, and hybrid cast, Through the Arc of the Rain Forest differs from other conventional works of Asian American fiction, suggesting that the forces of globalization compel narrative expansion beyond a solely Asian or Asian American focus. Lee claims that Yamashita is more concerned with the emergence of “alternative communities…composed of nationally and racially heterogeneous social actors who are globally interrelated by virtue of worldwide media links, touristic travel across borders, international finance networks, transnational trade, and a shared ecology” (247).

Lee finally concludes her essay by suggesting that resistance against the convergence of Asian American Studies and Asia-Pacific Rim Studies stems from overlooked “class cleavages” rather than territorial disputes (250). She suggests that while Asia-Pacific Rim scholars celebrate the cosmopolitan, “transnational Asian capitalist” that form comprise of an elite entrepreneurial class, Asian American scholars will not embrace the field unless more attention is given to “marginalized, even disenfranchised, subjects in the basin” (251, 250). Lee asserts however, that the realities of our globalization demonstrate that Asian American scholars can no longer cling to their “foundational subaltern identity politics” and must come to acknowledge the economic privilege of some Asian/American groups in spite of their racial marginalization, which Yamashita powerfully depicts in her character, Kazumasu. Lee finally leaves us with the observation that Through the Arc of the Rain Forest “advocates a forgetfulness of traumatic monoracial politics in order to enable the imagining of hybrid—and even pleasurable—spatial, racial, and cross-class convergences” (254).

Annotation: David Palumbo-Liu’s “The Occupation of Form” (2008)

As promised an original annotation at last. ^^

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Palumbo-Liu, David. “The Occupation of Form: (Re)theorizing Literary History.” American Literary History. 20.4 (2008): 814-835. Print.

In this article Palumbo-Liu examines two academic journals, New Literary History and American Literary History that grapple with debates about the productivity of formalism in contemporary literary studies. Both journals reject formalism’s ahistorical emphasis on close reading and posit theory as the mechanism that will help “(re)connect the study of literature to the world outside” (816). Palumbo-Liu, however, calls for a reexamination of formalism and ultimately a productive recuperation of formalist concerns for critical literary analyses.

He notes how the emerging school of “New Formalism” articulates “a basic desire to return to close, formalist readings of texts” in addition to a “common feeling that these readings should be attached to the larger socio-historical formations in which these texts were produced” (820). While Palumbo-Liu supports this movement, he attempts to further conceptualize the advantages and insights New Formalism will provide as a critical apparatus in light of the increasing “transnationaliz[ation] of American literary studies” (820). He asserts that “Form” should be viewed as “common place” where readers can articulate their own literary interpretations in conjunction with those of others (822). Palumbo-Liu emphasizes that within a transnational frame, Formalism an analysis of “transsubjectivity,” or “slices” of simultaneous and nonsimultaneous histories” in terms of both temporal and spatial incongruities (828).

In the latter half of his essay he goes on to discuss how Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange offers a productive terrain to employ the apparatus of New Formalism in a transnational context. He notes how the form of Yamashita’s novel reflects the way in which forces of globalization and neocolonialism force people into proximity and dependency, without necessarily a commensurate degree of control and self-determination” (828). He then goes on to analyze the consciousness of Manzanar, who conducts an orchestra from his post atop a Los Angeles freeway, sees the familiar urban sprawl below him steadily morph and change wit “markers of new intimacies and encumbrances” (830). Palumbo-Liu suggests that Manzanar perceives the form of the hidden form of the city beyond its material structural edifices and economic flows, to conduct beautiful urban music from seemingly cacophonous sounds and disparate events.

He also references the preface to The Portrait of a Lady in which Henry James describes “the house of fiction” as containing numerous disconnected windows through which readers can view the work of art. In contrast to James’ configuration, however, Palumbo-Liu suggests that Yamashita’s novel presents overlapping transhistorical and transnational spaces, which is ultimately closer to his own conception of form.

To him, “literary form is…both a material and real ‘thing,’ but one variously inhabited and animated by various occupants” (832). Palumbo-Lui emphasizes that the simultaneous multiplicity of time and space as heterogeneous and overlapping is emblematic of “the contemporary, late capitalist world” (832). Form he asserts finally, serves as “a necessary container and common ground that is precisely not reified but dynamic, a contingent meeting space for otherwise divergent histories, literary and public at once” (833). He therefore encourages the manipulation of form to serve the multivalent interests and concerns of the reading public.

Annotation: Pei-Chia Lan’s “Legal Servitude and Free Illegality” (2007)

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Lan, Pei-Chia. “Legal Servitude and Free Illegality: Migrant ‘Guest’ Workers in Taiwan.” Asian Diasporas: New Formations, New Conceptions. Eds. Rhacel S. Parreñas and Lok C. D. Siu. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2007. 253-277. Print.

In her essay Lan broadly explores the experience of migrant guest workers in Taiwan. She asserts that “transmigration within Asia” has greatly increased “in the last decade” as workers, generally from Southeast Asian countries, come to fill the demand for cheap labor in the rapidly industrializing East Asian states (254). Lan argues that migrants are heavily exploited within the guest worker contract system, emphasizing that many actually find more freedom, better working conditions and wages by running away from their employers and assuming a state of illegality. She accentuates that such realities challenge popular assumptions about “improved security within legal realms and prevalent vulnerability in irregular migration” (254). Lan further demonstrates that in spite of globalization, the nation-state still retain their incredible influence in the world economy by regulating international labor flows.

Lan defines “guest worker” as “migrant workers [who] are employed on temporary contracts and are prohibited from immigrating or becoming naturalized” (255). She suggests that this system can be somewhat paralleled to indentured servitude or the “‘coolie’ system” in the United States (255). Lan emphasizes that as “guest workers,” migrants are treated as merely “disposable labor,” and are only allowed residence within a country for a specified term (256). Forbidden from developing family or communal ties that will lead to any form of “permanent settlement,” their labor is merely exhausted for the defined period and then they are expected to return to their home country. Lan accentuates that the guest worker system in Asian countries is particularly distinct because of the incredible degree of direct government intervention and regulation. She reveals that “[s]everal Asian governments, for example those of the Philippines and Indonesia, have established special labor export agencies within their national bureaucracies to regulate flows, train potential migrants, and promote their workers to receiving countries” (256).

In her discussion of Taiwan, Lan suggests that in “October 1989” the government “authorized a special order that allowed foreigners to work for a national construction project,” which gradually extended to private sector work (257). She further notes how Taiwan’s “Council of Labor Affairs (CLA)” was established to levy quotas and manage the distribution of migrant workers in various industries. She accentuates that these guest worker policies are specifically aimed to “ensure that migrant workers are temporally transient and spatially fixed” (258). While these laborers are geographically within the nation-state they are barred from permanent residence. Lan interestingly notes, however, that these policies differ in terms of class. Whereas blue-collar workers are rigorously regulated by the quota system and “are not eligible for permanent residence or citizenship,” white-collar workers are not subjected to the same restrictions (258). Lan argues that one of the most disabling features of the guest worker contract is how it “depriv[es]…[migrants] of the right to circulate in the domestic labor market” as they can only work for their designated employer for their specified term in Taiwan (259). She suggests this is one frightening demonstrating of how the government manages it’s the international labor population and essentially “monito[r] the weareabouts of these ethnic others” (259).

She suggests that migrants also have to pay exorbitant placement fees in order to secure employment in Taiwan. Lan notes that this is probably due to the fact that Taiwan is a desirable place to work and offers relatively higher wages than other Asian countries. Probably the biggest reason, however, is that the competitive broker industry fighting for the business of a “limited number of employers possessing quotas” (260). Lan emphasizes that as these employers receive “kickback[s]” from broker, the financial burden is subsequently displaced to the migrant workers (260). She notes that within this system, quotas are more valued than the workers themselves, who are easily disposable.

Lan goes on to discuss how the “bondage of contract employment” essentially turns the guest worker system into a form of slavery as migrants lack real legal protection due to their alien status and are deprived of the right of mobility, the right to quit and change employers. Lan suggests that workers are often compelled to overlook their unfavorable working conditions and abuses so as to get their contracts renewed and pay off their accumulated debts. She reveals that in light of these harsh realities some migrants choose to runaway.

Lan emphasizes that with their new undocumented status many migrants find better working conditions, as they gain the freedom to choose whom to work for and can leave whenever they please. With their new employers they can also use the threat of quitting to negotiate better wages and hours. While Lan acknowledges that undocumented workers do face some risk such as deportation and “lack of legal protection and health insurance,” she claims that they surprisingly find more satisfaction with their “illegality.” She goes on to discuss how migrants have subverted the original regulative measures of the passport as form of national identification by creating and obtaining forgeries to (re)enter Taiwan and work outside of the terms granted in their guest worker contracts.

She ultimately concludes her essay by asserting that “[t]he ‘guest’worker policy in Asia has created a highly exploitative system of labor migration. Migrant workers not only lack political rights and civil liberties but also are deprived of the economic right of market mobility” (271). Lan also offers a final warning to countries such as the United States that are thinking about instituting a guest worker system to supplant more “irregular migration” flows (272). She accentuates that without proper regard to upholding the civil rights of migrant workers, the US may be sanctioning and indeed perpetuating a more insidious system of slavery.