Jason Oliver Chang
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040863
- eISBN:
- 9780252099359
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040863.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter introduces the subject of the Chinese presence in Mexico through their distorted representation in a state museum. The history of Chinese Mexicans provides new ways to analyze the ...
More
This chapter introduces the subject of the Chinese presence in Mexico through their distorted representation in a state museum. The history of Chinese Mexicans provides new ways to analyze the formation of mestizo national identity in Revolutionary Mexico. This chapter introduces the significance of the 1917 constitution by linking its legal definition of the government’s obligation to protect the population with the historical development of racial domination. The methodological approach of an Asian Americanist critique is explored to show why attention to the discursive and ideological construction of racialized Asian difference is important to conceptions of the Mexican national state. In showing the centrality of race in the Mexican governance, the chapter lays out a comparative racial formation approach that examines the role of anti-Chinese politics in the reformulation of citizenship, state power, and national identity after the 1910 revolution.Less
This chapter introduces the subject of the Chinese presence in Mexico through their distorted representation in a state museum. The history of Chinese Mexicans provides new ways to analyze the formation of mestizo national identity in Revolutionary Mexico. This chapter introduces the significance of the 1917 constitution by linking its legal definition of the government’s obligation to protect the population with the historical development of racial domination. The methodological approach of an Asian Americanist critique is explored to show why attention to the discursive and ideological construction of racialized Asian difference is important to conceptions of the Mexican national state. In showing the centrality of race in the Mexican governance, the chapter lays out a comparative racial formation approach that examines the role of anti-Chinese politics in the reformulation of citizenship, state power, and national identity after the 1910 revolution.
Jason Oliver Chang
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040863
- eISBN:
- 9780252099359
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040863.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This book tells the history of anti-Chinese politics in Mexican culture. It reveals the hidden influence that anti-Chinese racism, or antichinismo, has had on the formation of the revolutionary ...
More
This book tells the history of anti-Chinese politics in Mexican culture. It reveals the hidden influence that anti-Chinese racism, or antichinismo, has had on the formation of the revolutionary government and mestizo national identity. The imagined racial figure of Chinese men created a profound impact in Mexican society. The book employs an Asian Americanist critique to evaluate Mexico as a racial state to discuss the political function of antichinismo at various points of national crisis. After the revolution, the social rights mandate of the 1917 constitution created a new rationality for the legitimacy and authority of the national state – to care for the good of the indigenous population. This book shows how Mexican politics relied upon racism against Chinese people to create polemical notions of the public good that helped generate new relationships between the government and the governed. The book is divided chronologically to attend to three major phases of antichinismo: the disposable worker, the killable subject, and the pernicious defiler. Through discourses of Chinese racial difference, diverse Mexican actors created alternative visions of the nation and helped rework the relationships of rule and consent. A regional approach to telling this national story illustrates that people took up antichinismo for different reasons but coalesced through the state ideology of revolutionary government’s mestizo nationalism.Less
This book tells the history of anti-Chinese politics in Mexican culture. It reveals the hidden influence that anti-Chinese racism, or antichinismo, has had on the formation of the revolutionary government and mestizo national identity. The imagined racial figure of Chinese men created a profound impact in Mexican society. The book employs an Asian Americanist critique to evaluate Mexico as a racial state to discuss the political function of antichinismo at various points of national crisis. After the revolution, the social rights mandate of the 1917 constitution created a new rationality for the legitimacy and authority of the national state – to care for the good of the indigenous population. This book shows how Mexican politics relied upon racism against Chinese people to create polemical notions of the public good that helped generate new relationships between the government and the governed. The book is divided chronologically to attend to three major phases of antichinismo: the disposable worker, the killable subject, and the pernicious defiler. Through discourses of Chinese racial difference, diverse Mexican actors created alternative visions of the nation and helped rework the relationships of rule and consent. A regional approach to telling this national story illustrates that people took up antichinismo for different reasons but coalesced through the state ideology of revolutionary government’s mestizo nationalism.
