Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Perverse Modernities)

Rating:
Summary: Speaking of David Eng...
Review: "Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America" offers lucid and original readings of an array of Asian American texts to reveal how patterns of melancholy, loss, impotence, hysteria, anxiety, and reverse hallucination relate to the traumatic history of Asian/American immigration, failed assimilation, diasporic dispersal and the formation of alternative histories, communities, and modes of multiple identification. Works by Frank Chin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Lonny Kaneko, David Henry Hwang, Louie Chu, David Wong Louie, Ang Lee, and Zack Linmark are read with great lucidity, originality, juxtaposition, zest, and care. The study weaves a lucid expostion of textual detail and racialized subject-formation at the same time it respects the shifting dynamics of social constraint and historical context.

In related projects like his multi-sited anthology on Loss and the therapy-framed essay �A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia,� Eng works in and upon a politicized version of theory (as such) to provide a far-reaching psychoanalytical model of a "melancholy subjectivity" that is not pathological nor individualized but fully socialized, situated in US race relations, and at best productive of left-leaning historical and political transformations. The push from Lacan to Benjamin suggests Eng�s will to achieve an historical materialism with range, impact, and care. This is work on "feeling" but with politics and vision, unlike a few others I might mention here "but prefer not to" this Sunday morning in Santa Cruz.

Rating:
Summary: Refiguring the scrappy Asian/American field as such,
Review: "Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America" offers lucid, theoretically rich, and original readings of an array of Asian American texts to reveal how patterns of melancholy, loss, impotence, hysteria, anxiety, and reverse hallucination relate to the racially traumatic history of Asian/American immigration, failed assimilation, diasporic dispersal and the formation of alternative histories, queer communities, and modes of multiple identification. Works by Frank Chin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Lonny Kaneko, David Henry Hwang, Louie Chu, David Wong Louie, Ang Lee, and Zack Linmark are read with deft lucidity, originality, juxtaposition, and care. The study weaves a lucid expostion of textual detail and racialized subject-formation at the same time it respects the shifting dynamics of social constraint and historical context. In related workd like the multi-sited anthology on "Loss" and the therapy-framed essay "A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia," Eng moves to provide a far-reaching psychoanalytical model of a melancholy subjectivity that is not pathological nor individualized but fully socialized, situated in US race relations, and productive of historical and political transformations. The push from Lacan to Benjamin suggests Eng's left-leaning will to achieve an historical materialism with range, impact, and care.

Rating:
Summary: Speaking of David Eng...
Review: "Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America" offers lucid and original readings of an array of Asian American texts to reveal how patterns of melancholy, loss, impotence, hysteria, anxiety, and reverse hallucination relate to the traumatic history of Asian/American immigration, failed assimilation, diasporic dispersal and the formation of alternative histories, communities, and modes of multiple identification. Works by Frank Chin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Lonny Kaneko, David Henry Hwang, Louie Chu, David Wong Louie, Ang Lee, and Zack Linmark are read with great lucidity, originality, juxtaposition, zest, and care. The study weaves a lucid expostion of textual detail and racialized subject-formation at the same time it respects the shifting dynamics of social constraint and historical context.

In related projects like his multi-sited anthology on Loss and the therapy-framed essay 'A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia,' Eng works in and upon a politicized version of theory (as such) to provide a far-reaching psychoanalytical model of a "melancholy subjectivity" that is not pathological nor individualized but fully socialized, situated in US race relations, and at best productive of left-leaning historical and political transformations. The push from Lacan to Benjamin suggests Eng's will to achieve an historical materialism with range, impact, and care. This is work on "feeling" but with politics and vision, unlike a few others I might mention here "but prefer not to" this Sunday morning in Santa Cruz.

Rating:
Summary: Refiguring the scrappy Asian/American field as such,
Review: "Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America" offers lucid, theoretically rich, and original readings of an array of Asian American texts to reveal how patterns of melancholy, loss, impotence, hysteria, anxiety, and reverse hallucination relate to the racially traumatic history of Asian/American immigration, failed assimilation, diasporic dispersal and the formation of alternative histories, queer communities, and modes of multiple identification. Works by Frank Chin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Lonny Kaneko, David Henry Hwang, Louie Chu, David Wong Louie, Ang Lee, and Zack Linmark are read with deft lucidity, originality, juxtaposition, and care. The study weaves a lucid expostion of textual detail and racialized subject-formation at the same time it respects the shifting dynamics of social constraint and historical context. In related workd like the multi-sited anthology on "Loss" and the therapy-framed essay "A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia," Eng moves to provide a far-reaching psychoanalytical model of a melancholy subjectivity that is not pathological nor individualized but fully socialized, situated in US race relations, and productive of historical and political transformations. The push from Lacan to Benjamin suggests Eng's left-leaning will to achieve an historical materialism with range, impact, and care.

Rating:
Summary: Ultimately less satisfying than one would hope
Review: Although in some ways provocative, this book poses a question it never adequately grapples with--namely, can the "materiality" of race be properly characterized or understood as a "discursive limit" to ideological constructions of ethnicity without being understood as existing outside of discourse? It seems to me that Eng fails to address the question of whether such constructions may be regarded as either a pre- or extra-discursive "hard kernel of the Real," one the one hand, or simply another aspect of discourse, on the other hand. His work would benefit from a more thorough engagement with, and analysis of, the "objet petit a" in the work of Zizek and Lacan. Perhaps "race" in general ought to be regarded a primordial psychic "hole," an "absence" or pure negativity where a "grounding" for discourse ought to be but proves to be lacking. Unfortunately that is a proposition that Eng hints at but does not explore.


Rating:
Summary: Of Limited Use
Review: As a student of cultural studies who is interested in limning the taxonomic and theoretical relations among the "queer," the "Asian," and the "American," I must say that I found this book rather disappointing. Eng seems to have an unerring eye for the trivial, the irrelevant, and the beside-the-point. He also seems to be unfamiliar with current scholarship that highlights the errors underlying the view of the performative subject as a figure whose agency can, in any proper sense, be seen as "entailed" by virtue of its positionality vis-a-vis the rights-bearing subject. Eng would also have benefited from consulting recent legal scholarship on the "intersectionality" of the queer Asian male (or female), as well as the "co-synthesis" produced by juxtaposing various marginalized identities.

Rating:
Summary: says it like no one else
Review: I agree largely and almost wholly with the previous and first independent reviewer of this book: Eng's 'Racial Castration' is at times, hyperacademic and perhaps even overly into the realm of philosophy and not social studies. Still, it is a unique, overdue work on the perception of-- and the creation of the perception of-- asian american males in mainstream American society.

I believe that Eng brings up some extremely insightful and heretofore overlooked aspects that are central to 'Asian-american male masculinity' in America. First and foremost is the concept that, as 'queerness' or the 'feminization' of the asian american male is a direct result of the white-male-as-heterosexual-masculine-hegemony. Too often, asian american masculinity and the perception of asian american men in this country deems the denunciation of homosexuality-- 'queerness'-- as essential to acceptance as part of masculine America as a whole. I don't think that any authors to this point have pointed out the inherently intimate relation and intertwining of sexuality and race in this case. To throw out acceptance of gay Asian-America as masculine merely to seek acceptance of "masculine Asian-America" as a whole is a big mistake.

I think that Eng has rightfully pointed out how 'queer' Asian-American males are often left holding the bag as their own Asian-American culture, blind to how 'American culture' as emasculated their own heterosexual men, turns around and rejects the masculinity of their own 'queer' men. And I believe that it is true: Asian American men, queer or straight, face largely the same problems of how their masculinity is perceived in America, and both groups are basically in the same boat in this regard.

Eng's deep delving-- almost reaching?-- into areas that would seemingly be a stretch to relate to his topic (mainly deep psychoanalytical and philosophical theories of the perception/acceptance/rejection of self) are somewhat difficult to grasp, but I believe that they are germane because they do largely reinforce the elusive depth at which stereotypes of asian-american masculinity are adopted, inculcated, and reinforced from outside.

I believe that Eng has quite aptly addressed his stated mission of exploring the 'Racial Castration' of Asian American men in America, and I laud 'Racial Castration' as a theoretically seminal work. It is also aptly named. The only shame is that it will almost certainly be marginalized as 'academia', as it is written to be almost completely inaccesible to the general public, i.e., the average American. And while it does attack the theoretical/philosophical problems of the perception of asian-american masculinity in America, it probably won't do very much in the way of practically addressing what IS inherently an everyday, concrete social and political issue. *Real* social change won't occur in the ivory towers of academia, but with average Americans! Still, if it raises the awareness of even a few individuals who read it, it will have gratifyingly served its purpose.

It has raised mine; and for this reason, this book is a keeper in my collection!