I just finished peer-reviewing Sue-Im Lee’s article “‘We are not the World’: Global Village, Universalism, and Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange” (2007) and included some of my personal observations in the comments section. See the updated post here.
I am planning to write a thesis on Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange so expect more peer-reviews of Frances’ annotations on the novel soon! ^^
Peer-Review: 1
This annotation is for a paper I am currently writing for my ENGL 391W course at Queens College on Science Fiction. I will be conducting an analysis of the science fictional and magical realist elements in Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange and the novel’s implications on contemporary discourses about globalization. See my prospectus here.
Lee, Sue-Im. “‘We are Not the World’: Global Village, Universalism, and Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange.” MFS: Modern Fiction Studies 52.3 (Fall 2007): 501-527. Print.
In this article Lee demonstrates how Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange challenges the “collective, singular subject position that stands as the ‘we’ in the ‘We are the world” slogan (502). Rather than creating the equal, interconnected community promised through its associations with the “global village,” she argues that this universal “we” obscures the stratified nature of global politics. First World nations in fact use this “singular subject position” to impose their values and interests on to Third World countries, acting as the “few who presume to speak for all,” thus neglecting the persisting inequalities that exist in our age of globalization and transnational migrations (503). In addition to critiquing universalism, Lee reveals that Tropic of Orange simultaneously calls for the development of a new “collective subject positioning,” a re-imagining of the global village that emphasizes voluntary and reciprocal participation (502). Only by encouraging mutual involvement in the global community, she asserts, can we retrieve the critical potential of universalism and make progress in our demands for human rights and improved interethnic and intercontinental relations. Towards the end of her article, Lee explains how “the fantastic genre” contributes to this revitalized vision of the global village, but the brevity of her discussion fails to communicate the complexity of the novel’s narrative structure (521). Therefore, in my paper I hope to extend Lee’s arguments by exploring how Yamashita’s interweaving of science fictional and magical realist elements in the text influences our perception of this global community as well as its participants.
Sharon Tran 