Weimin Tang
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622099456
- eISBN:
- 9789882206687
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622099456.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This chapter, by focusing on what have been largely denounced as the two assimilationist Bildungsromane, Jade Snow Wong's Fifth Chinese Daughter, and Gish Jen's Typical American, brings to the fore ...
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This chapter, by focusing on what have been largely denounced as the two assimilationist Bildungsromane, Jade Snow Wong's Fifth Chinese Daughter, and Gish Jen's Typical American, brings to the fore an insider and outsider's profound ambivalence that illuminates the full complexity of the cross-cultural Chinese American subject. It is precisely in the active presence of this Chineseness, both as a historical given and cultural reinvention, that the myth of the American Dream as a trope of assimilation in the narratives of Wong's and Jen's mimic (wo)men's striving for likeness to the original symbol is simultaneously negotiated and contested. Ultimately transcending the reductive dichotomous polarization, the dream narratives of Wong and Jen are reread here as enunciating a metonymic displacement and transformation of the national myth in the cross-cultural Chinese American subject's very translational repetition of the American Dream itself.Less
This chapter, by focusing on what have been largely denounced as the two assimilationist Bildungsromane, Jade Snow Wong's Fifth Chinese Daughter, and Gish Jen's Typical American, brings to the fore an insider and outsider's profound ambivalence that illuminates the full complexity of the cross-cultural Chinese American subject. It is precisely in the active presence of this Chineseness, both as a historical given and cultural reinvention, that the myth of the American Dream as a trope of assimilation in the narratives of Wong's and Jen's mimic (wo)men's striving for likeness to the original symbol is simultaneously negotiated and contested. Ultimately transcending the reductive dichotomous polarization, the dream narratives of Wong and Jen are reread here as enunciating a metonymic displacement and transformation of the national myth in the cross-cultural Chinese American subject's very translational repetition of the American Dream itself.
Jennifer M. Windt
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780262028677
- eISBN:
- 9780262327466
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262028677.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
The chapter analyzes the closest rival to the quasi-perceptual view, namely the view that dreams are imaginative experiences, and again distinguishes different variants. Of particular interest is the ...
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The chapter analyzes the closest rival to the quasi-perceptual view, namely the view that dreams are imaginative experiences, and again distinguishes different variants. Of particular interest is the claim that the phenomenology of dreaming is comparable to that of waking imagination and daydreams, which is often related to attempts to draw a sharp distinction between imagining and perceiving more generally. From this discussion, it becomes clear that dreaming is an important test case for theories of perception, hallucination, and imagination. In the second half of the chapter, I relate the philosophical debate on dreaming and imagination to attempts, in the psychological literature, to describe dreaming as a quasi-linguistic form of thinking, but also to emphasize the continuity of dream content with waking experiences and waking concerns. I argue that the attempt to model the phenomenology of dreaming on that of imaginative wake states fails for similar reasons as the quasi-perceptual view. Still, the imagination view is instructive because it focuses on the ordered nature of dreaming and its narrative structure. The chapter closes by tentatively suggesting that the comparison between dreaming and waking mind wandering might help resolve the philosophical debate between the quasi-perceptual and the imagination view.Less
The chapter analyzes the closest rival to the quasi-perceptual view, namely the view that dreams are imaginative experiences, and again distinguishes different variants. Of particular interest is the claim that the phenomenology of dreaming is comparable to that of waking imagination and daydreams, which is often related to attempts to draw a sharp distinction between imagining and perceiving more generally. From this discussion, it becomes clear that dreaming is an important test case for theories of perception, hallucination, and imagination. In the second half of the chapter, I relate the philosophical debate on dreaming and imagination to attempts, in the psychological literature, to describe dreaming as a quasi-linguistic form of thinking, but also to emphasize the continuity of dream content with waking experiences and waking concerns. I argue that the attempt to model the phenomenology of dreaming on that of imaginative wake states fails for similar reasons as the quasi-perceptual view. Still, the imagination view is instructive because it focuses on the ordered nature of dreaming and its narrative structure. The chapter closes by tentatively suggesting that the comparison between dreaming and waking mind wandering might help resolve the philosophical debate between the quasi-perceptual and the imagination view.
