ACLA 2006 Annual Meeting: The Human and Its Others

Is it possible to articulate the subject that subverts the late-capitalist brand of Orientalism? Is there a homo-social system that sustains inter/national ties between men of empires? Are the nation-states in postcolonial East Asia semi-sovereign vis-à-vis the Western sovereignty? These are some of the questions that arise when we observe the terms of political, economic and cultural relations that cohere the Pacific Rim as a region. Consequently, it becomes necessary to explicate power relations that are organized around gender and race, and overdetermine the formation of gender and national subjectivity. This panel seeks to capture the critical junctures in which geopolitical designations of nation-states along the Pacific Rim, either as the colonizer or the colonized, reciprocally inform the concept and content of gender and nation. We shall inquire how gender and nation are trans-national and trans-cultural construction, while working out theoretical paradigms based on the (post)colonial histories as represented in films, literature and culture. To inquire into trans-pacific configuration of gender, sexual, national and racial/ethnic identifications, relevant questions might be: How does the concept of hybrid figure in this relation?: What kinds of masculine and feminine subjects emerge in both the metropolis and (post)colonies?: How do (neo)imperialisms of America and East Asian territories figure in this context?: How may the Pacific Rim (dis)articulate classic boundaries of nation-states and regions?: What are the cultural expressions of national subjectivity in the Pacific Rim?

Friday, March 24

Yuko Shibata, Cornell University
“Prostitutes in Colonial Shanghai and Mistresses in Bombed Nagasaki: Stories of Gendered Violence and National Borders”
Hisayo Ogushi, Keio University
“Toward the Possibility of Transvested Orientalism”
Meiling Wu, California State University, East Bay
“The Nobel Laureates in Chinese Stories: Embodiment/Disembodiment of History and Her-Story”
Keiko Nitta, Hitotsubashi University
“Deviation of Manhood in Martial Arts Movies: On Disorderly Sex and Ethnicity”

Saturday, March 25

Ikuo Shinjo, Ryuku University
“The Political Formation of the Homoerotics and the Cold War”
Hyon Joo Yoo Murphree, Syracuse University
“Nation and the Masculine Desire of the Postcolony”
Alexander Binns, University of Leeds
“Decomposing the Diegesis: Music and Erotics in Wong Kar-Wai’s ‘Fallen Angels’”
Naoki Sakai, Cornell University
“Response to ‘Trans-Pacific Configuration of Gender and Nation’”