Chih-Ming Wang
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824836429
- eISBN:
- 9780824871055
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824836429.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter takes up the transpacific endeavor of Yung Wing—the first Chinese ever to obtain a college degree in the United States—as a point of departure to explain how study abroad reflects a ...
More
This chapter takes up the transpacific endeavor of Yung Wing—the first Chinese ever to obtain a college degree in the United States—as a point of departure to explain how study abroad reflects a structure of feeling called “leaving Asia for America,” which is created in the history of Western imperialism in Asia. The act of studying abroad is here examined as a deep-seated psychic dynamic overdetermined by a colonial modernity that was hinged specifically on the imagination of transpacific movement, in which each departure and arrival was charged with complex feelings and thoughts. Tracking his transpacific career and translated life, this chapter argues that Yung Wing represents a distinctive model of Asian American intellectual whose existence and activities have a clear orientation toward Asia.Less
This chapter takes up the transpacific endeavor of Yung Wing—the first Chinese ever to obtain a college degree in the United States—as a point of departure to explain how study abroad reflects a structure of feeling called “leaving Asia for America,” which is created in the history of Western imperialism in Asia. The act of studying abroad is here examined as a deep-seated psychic dynamic overdetermined by a colonial modernity that was hinged specifically on the imagination of transpacific movement, in which each departure and arrival was charged with complex feelings and thoughts. Tracking his transpacific career and translated life, this chapter argues that Yung Wing represents a distinctive model of Asian American intellectual whose existence and activities have a clear orientation toward Asia.
Chih-Ming Wang
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824836429
- eISBN:
- 9780824871055
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824836429.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This concluding chapter remarks on the unstable categorization of the “Asian American” due to its transnational and multidirectional linkages. The Asian American identity possesses multivalent and ...
More
This concluding chapter remarks on the unstable categorization of the “Asian American” due to its transnational and multidirectional linkages. The Asian American identity possesses multivalent and discrepant articulations of the transpacific movement that bring together different subjects, identities, and desire that cohabit the transnational cultural political space that this book has called “Asia/America.” These traits create difficulties in theorizing the Asian American identity as a whole—difficulties further compounded by the dangers of diaspora giving way to divisive politics and ethnic absolutism. Yet the chapter argues that it is this diasporic etymology that enables us to better locate the foreign students and their overseas experiences in the Asian/American nexus, particularly in the site of the university, which is at once national and transnational.Less
This concluding chapter remarks on the unstable categorization of the “Asian American” due to its transnational and multidirectional linkages. The Asian American identity possesses multivalent and discrepant articulations of the transpacific movement that bring together different subjects, identities, and desire that cohabit the transnational cultural political space that this book has called “Asia/America.” These traits create difficulties in theorizing the Asian American identity as a whole—difficulties further compounded by the dangers of diaspora giving way to divisive politics and ethnic absolutism. Yet the chapter argues that it is this diasporic etymology that enables us to better locate the foreign students and their overseas experiences in the Asian/American nexus, particularly in the site of the university, which is at once national and transnational.
