Jackie Chan's Indian play: immigration, Asianness, and the contracting self in the American settler colony
2015; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 6; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/2201473x.2015.1090565
ISSN2201-473X
Autores Tópico(s)Asian Culture and Media Studies
ResumoABSTRACTThis paper is concerned with what I define as a cultural politics of ‘being from’ in the American settler colony. I use Tom Dey's Western/‘cop-buddy’ hybrid Shanghai Noon (2000), and most specifically what is presented in the film as actor Jackie Chan's failed and comedic partaking in the white and homosocial tradition of Indian play. I use the film as a textual anchor for the critical analysis of the types of contracting subjectivities that are implicitly privileged within the foundational delineations separating settlers, Natives, and arrivants in what President Obama described as a nation of immigrants that is carried on the back of the non-immigrant status of Native Americans. I explain that in his conversion from Chinese national to Asian American – a transition that is prefaced by his disqualification from the settler's exclusive struggle over nativeness, followed by his peculiar transition into an (Asian) American cowboy – Chan's character becomes representative of this dialectical (and, in his case, always already incomplete) movement from genealogy to autology, or from pre-modern forms of marriage, ethnic affiliations, and social constraints, to a settler-liberal ideal of intimacy, reasoned consent, and self-sovereignty. In other words, once Chan's character fulfils this trajectory of self-discovery in the refashioning of place and self, his new-found voice and sexuality bespeak his idiosyncratic conversion into an Asian American. I argue that his conversion illuminates some of the complex modalities of raced and gendered intimacy in settler articulations of the privileged, contracting subjectivity of liberal colonialism. What such representation of an idealized, autological migrant subject allows us to suggest, is that non-Native people of colour, as they re-enact themselves settler colonial modes of Native dispossession and/or co-optation, often remain peculiarly moored to the hegemonic structure of feeling of American settlerism in ways that often put upon them assimilationist demands that are parallel to those imposed upon Indigenous bodies as always incomplete white liberal subjects in the making. AcknowledgementI would like to acknowledge and extend my heartfelt gratitude to David Palumbo-Liu, Karen Sharma, Michael Griffiths, and the anonymous reviewers of the journal for their invaluable insights and editorial comments on earlier drafts of this work.Notes on contributorBruno Cornellier is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies in the Department of English at the University of Winnipeg. He is the author of La ‘chose indienne’: Cinéma et politiques de la représentation autochtone au Québec et au Canada (Nota Bene, 2015). He has also published articles in Settler Colonial Studies, the Canadian Journal of Film Studies, the London Journal of Canadian Studies, and Nouvelles Vues. He recently completed a series of forthcoming articles and book chapters on the topic of the doubly complex coloniality of French Canada.Notes1 Elizabeth A. Povinelli, The Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 190.2 Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 182.3 In his January 29, 2013, Remarks on Comprehensive Immigration Reform, delivered at Del Sol High School in Las Vegas, Nevada, President Obama stated Immigration has always been an issue that enflames passions. That's not surprising. There are few things that are more important to us as a society than who gets to come here and call our country home; who gets the privilege of becoming a citizen of the United States of America. That's a big deal. When we talk about that in the abstract, it's easy sometimes for the discussion to take on a feeling of “us” versus “them.” And when that happens, a lot of folks forget that most of “us” used to be “them.” We forget that. It's really important for us to remember our history. Unless you're one of the first Americans, a Native American, you came from someplace else. Somebody brought you. Ken Salazar, he's of Mexican American descent, but he points that his family has been living where he lives for 400 years, so he didn't immigrate anywhere. The Irish who left behind a land of famine. The Germans who fled persecution. The Scandinavians who arrived eager to pioneer out west. The Polish. The Russians. The Italians. The Chinese. The Japanese. The West Indians. The huddled masses who came through Ellis Island on one coast and Angel Island on the other. All those folks, before they were “us,” they were “them”.Obama's speech is available online at https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/01/29/remarks-president-comprehensive-immigration-reform.4 Robert Nichols, ‘Contract and Usurpation: Enfranchisement and Racial Governance in Settler-Colonial Contexts', in Theorizing Native Studies, eds. Audra Simpson and Andrea Smith (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), 100.5 Nichols, ‘Contract and Usurpation', 101.6 Jodi A. Byrd, ‘Arriving on a Different Shore: US Empire at its Horizons', College Literature 41, no. 1 (2014): 174–5.7 On the topic of foundationalism, liberalism, and the disavowal of settler colonization in American exceptionalism and the myth of the self-made man, read Kevin Bruyneel, ‘The American Liberal Colonial Tradition’, Settler Colonial Studies 3, nos 3–4 (2013): 311–21.8 Byrd, ‘Arriving on a Different Shore', 175.9 Mark Rifkin, ‘Indigenizing Agamben: Rethinking Sovereignty in Light of the “Peculiar” Status of Native Peoples', Cultural Critique 73 (2009): 88–124.10 Rifkin, ‘Indigenizing Agamben', 94.11 Jodi A. Byrd, The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), xxvi.12 Ibid., xxx.13 Candace Fujikane, ‘Introduction: Asian Settler Colonialism in the U.S. Colony of Hawai‘i', in Asian Settler Colonialism: From Local Governance to the Habits of Everyday Life in Hawai‘i, eds. Candace Fujikane and Jonathan Y. Okamura (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008), 2.14 Sandra Hobbs, ‘figures of the Native in 20th-Century Quebec: The Subaltern and the Colonial Subject at the Intersection of Colony and Nation', Journal of Postcolonial Writing 44, no. 3 (2008): 307–18; Darryl Leroux, ‘The Many Paradoxes of Race in Québec: Civilization, Laïcité and Gender Equality', in Critical Inquiries: A Reader in Studies of Canada, eds. Lynn Caldwell, Carrianne Leung, and Darryl Leroux (Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2013), 53–70; Diana Brydon and Bruno Cornellier, ‘Canadian Postcolonialisms’, in The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature, ed. Cynthia Sugars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 755–79.15 Aileen Moreton-Robinson, ‘Writing Off Indigenous Sovereignty: The Discourse of Security and Patriarchal White Sovereignty', in Sovereign Subjects: Indigenous Sovereignty Matters, ed. Aileen Moreton-Robinson (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2007), 87.16 Ibid.17 Ibid., 93.18 In that regard, and in all fairness, there has recently been some important and notable contributions to the field, notably Corinn Columpar's and Michelle Raheja's books on Indigenous cinema and/or Indigenous representations in cinema. Columpar, Unsettling Sights: The Fourth World on Film (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010); Raheja, Reservation Reelism: Redfacing, Visual Sovereignty, and Representations of Native Americans in Film (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 2010). Both are committed to the question of Indigenous sovereignty, as well as to a deep critique of the systematic nature of settler colonialism. Frank B. Wilderson III's Red, White & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010) also offers a stimulating and provocative contribution to film theory and critical race theory with his reading of American cinema in light of what he theorizes as the US structure of racial antagonisms between white (‘settler', ‘master', and the ‘Human’), black (‘slave', fungibility, and the ‘non-human’) and red (savagery and the ‘half-human’).19 Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 9–10.20 Brian Hochman, Savage Preservation: The Ethnographic Origins of Modern Media Technology (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2014).21 Zoë Druick, ‘“Reaching the Multimillions”: Liberal Internationalism and the Establishment of Documentary Film', in Inventing Film Studies, eds. Lee Grieveson and Haidee Wasson (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 66–92.22 Columpar, Unsettling Sights, 20–1.23 Peter Limbrick, Making Settler Cinemas: Film and Colonial Encounters in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).24 Ibid., 3.25 Ibid., 5.26 Ibid., 13.27 On this triangular relation between (white) settlers, and indigenous and exogenous ‘others', see Lorenzo Veracini, Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 16–27.28 Gayle Wald, ‘Same Difference: Racial Masculinity in Hong Kong and Cop-Buddy “Hybrids”’, in Chinese Connections: Critical Perspectives on Film, Identity, and Diaspora, eds. Gina Marchetti, Peter X. Feng, and Tan See-Kam (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009), 68–81.29 For another reading of Rush Hour in light of what is often assumed to be the historically contentious relationship between Asian Americans and African Americans in the USA, read LeiLani Nishime, ‘“I'm Blackanese”: Buddy-Cop Films, Rush Hour, and Asian American and African American Cross-racial Identification', in Asian North American Identities Beyond the Hyphen, eds. Eleanor Ty and Donald C. Goellnicht (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 43–60.30 Wald, ‘Same Difference', 79.31 On the interracial cop-buddy movie from the perspective of Asian American Studies, see also Jane Chi Hyun Park, Yellow Future: Oriental Style in Hollywood Cinema (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 83–124.32 Gina Marchetti, ‘Jackie Chan and the Black Connection', in Keyframes: Popular Cinema and Cultural Studies, eds. Matthew Tinkcom and Amy Villarejo (New York: Routledge, 2001), 137–58.33 I borrow this terminology from Povinelli's groundbreaking analysis of liberal intimacies in The Empire of Love.34 Ibid., 183–85.35 I borrow this expression from Lisa Lowe in her book Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 12.36 Deloria, Playing Indian, 183.37 Ibid., 185.38 Homi K. Bhabha, ‘Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse', in The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 2004), 121–31.39 Richard Fung, ‘Looking for My Penis: The Eroticized Asian in Gay Video Porn', in How Do I Look? Queer Film & Video, ed. Bad Object-Choices (Seattle: Bay Press, 1991), 145–68; David Eng, Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001); Yen Le Espiritu, Asian American Women and Men: Labor, Laws, and Love, 2nd ed. (Lanhamn, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008); Celine Parreñas Shimizu, Straightjacket Sexualities: Unbinding Asian American Manhoods in the Movies (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012).40 In his recent book on Asian American ‘bottomhood’ in mainstream and gay porn films and videos, Nguyen Tan Hoang theorizes and redeploys in interesting ways these tropes about Asian male ‘bottomhood’ and effeminacy. Against Asian American cultural nationalists who sought to escape representational ‘bottomhood’ via a robustly heteropatriarchal reassertion of Asian American masculinity away from the ills of effeminacy, Nguyen redefines ‘bottomhood’ instead as an ‘ethical mode of relationality’ with a unique potential for coalitional politics. He thus proposes that ‘Instead of shoring up our sovereignty by conflating agency with mastery, adopting a view from the bottom reveals an inescapable exposure, vulnerability, and receptiveness in our reaching out to other people.' Nguyen Tan Hoang, A View from the Bottom: Asian American Masculinity and Sexual Representation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 2–4.41 This plot twist was abandoned in the film's sequel, Shanghai Knights (dir. D. Dobkin, 2003).42 Lowe, Immigrant Acts, 13.43 Ibid., 27.44 Ibid.45 Lisa Lowe, ‘The Intimacies of Four Continent', in Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History, ed. Ann Laura Stoler (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 192.46 Ibid., 195.47 Ibid., 194.48 In his book on Nineteenth Century British liberal thought, where he argues that liberalism has historically been a justification for empire, Uday Singh Mehta insists that the tension between liberal ideals of justice and the expansion of empire was not a contradiction, but was rather instrumental to the liberal mindset ‘in its global vision'. Mehta explains that ‘liberalism and the empire were tightly braided threads such that their separation would have resulted in the fraying of a well-woven mental and political tapestry'. Uday Singh, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 194.49 Lowe, Immigrant Acts, 26.50 Carole Pateman and Charles Mills, Contract & Domination (Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 2007).51 Robert Nichols, ‘Indigeneity and the Settler Contract Today', Philosophy and Social Criticism 39, no. 2 (2013): 168.52 Ibid., 175.53 Christopher Bracken and Jodi Byrd each polemically suggested that, in addition to failing basic legal tests of legitimacy, settler sovereignty is also criminal. Christopher Bracken, The Potlatch Papers: A Colonial Case History (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 231; Byrd, Transit of Empire, xii.54 Lowe, Immigrant Acts, 28.55 Patrick Wolfe, ‘Race and Racialisation: Some Thoughts', Postcolonial Studies 5, no. 1 (2002): 51–62. This essay was presented by Wolfe as a supplement to his previously published essay, ‘Land, Labor, and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race', The American Historical Review 106, no. 3 (2001): 866–905.56 Wolfe, ‘Race and Racialisation', 61.57 Ghassan Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society (New York: Routledge, 2000), 17.58 Lowe, Immigrant Acts, 22.59 Homay King, Lost in Translation: Orientalism, Cinema, and the Enigmatic Signifier (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010).60 Ibid., 3–4.61 Ibid., 8–9, 88–101.62 Ibid., 4.63 Lowe, Immigrant Acts, 18.64 On the topic of the fragile temporality of settler sovereignty, see Audra Simpson, ‘Subject of Sovereignty: Indigeneity, the Revenue Rule, and Juridics of Failed Consent', Law and Contemporary Problems 71 (2008): 191–215; Audra Simpson, ‘Under the Sign of Sovereignty: Certainty, Ambivalence, and Law in Native North America and Indigenous Australia', Wicazo Sa Review 25, no. 2 (2010): 107–24.65 Mark Jerng, Claiming Others: Transracial Adoption and National Belonging (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010); Jenny Wills, ‘Claiming America by Claiming Others: Asian-American Adoptive Parenthood in A Gesture Life and Digging to America', Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture (1900-present) 10, no. 1 (2011), http://www.americanpopularculture.com/journal/articles/spring_2011/wills.htm (accessed July 3, 2013).66 Byrd, Transit of Empire, xviii.67 Ibid., 201.68 David Palumbo-Liu, Asian/American: Historical Crossings of a Racial Frontier (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999).69 Byrd, Transit of Empire, 201.70 Ibid., 208.71 Ibid., 209.72 Ibid., 209–210.73 Ibid., 192.74 Bruno Cornellier, ‘The “Indian Thing”: On Representation and Reality in the Liberal Settler Colony', Settler Colonial Studies 3, no. 1 (2013): 56.75 Len Findlay, ‘Always Indigenize! The Radical Humanities in the Postcolonial Canadian University', in Canadian Cultural Studies: A Reader, eds. Sourayan Mookerjea, Imre Szeman, and Gail Faurschou (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 407.76 Audra Simpson, ‘Settlement's Secret', Cultural Anthropology 26, no. 2 (2011): 209.77 Rifkin, ‘Indigenizing Agamben', 91.
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