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Tonal intelligence : the aesthetics of Asian inscrutability during the long Cold War

Title: Tonal intelligence : the aesthetics of Asian inscrutability during the long Cold War / Sunny Xiang.
Author: Xiang, Sunny
Publication: New York : Columbia University Press, [2020]

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person.	Text	Use in library	JFE 21-724	Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315

Details

Description

xi, 353 pages : illustrations; 24 cm.

Summary

"In postwar America, different expressions of the "Inscrutable Oriental" have produced and challenged ideas about how we perceive, process, and make claims about race during periods of dramatic change and historical unpredictability. In Neutral Tones, Sunny Xiang examines two different modes of Asian and Asian-American self-representation. The first, produced during the height of the Cold War were US-sponsored projects that furthered U.S. strategic and ideological goals in Japan, Korea, China, and Vietnam. In addition to helping to reinforce Washington's goal of communist containment, they also reinforced liberal notions of racial assimilation and integration. Examining such case studies as Hirohito's transformation into a democratic human emperor, the testimonies of South Korean women, and the autobiography of a Korean POW, Xiang considers how these examples became sources of intelligence and certainty. While the earlier texts come from the records of the US foreign policy, the later come from literary and artistic works from the 1970s to the 2000s by figures such as Ha Jin, Kazuo Ishiguro, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and Viet Thanh Nguyen. These works, Xiang argues, critique and subvert earlier forms of self-expression and challenges and neutralizes standard markers and personas of race. In the place of compulsory forms of racial self-expression sponsored by mid-century US cold war liberalism, this new formulation of racial identity gave expression to an emergent economic regime that valorizes flexible persons - a regime increasingly associated with the rise of the Pacific Rim as an economic power"--

Series Statement

Literature now

Uniform Title

Literature Now.

Alternative Title

Temperament, temporality, and the American Cold War in Asia

Subject

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction: Hardly war, partly history -- The tone of intelligence : unconventional warfare and its archives -- The tone of the rumors : something in the air -- The tone of the times : a surpassing hurry -- The tone of documentation : the brainwashee's drone -- The tone of intimacy : among the fish -- Coda: The tone of commons : solidarities without a solid.

Call Number

JFE 21-724

ISBN

9780231196963
0231196962
9780231196970
0231196970
9780231551915 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

2020017168

OCLC

1157867942

Author

Xiang, Sunny, author.

Title

Tonal intelligence : the aesthetics of Asian inscrutability during the long Cold War / Sunny Xiang.

Publisher

New York : Columbia University Press, [2020]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Literature now

Literature Now.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Chronological Term

1900-1999

Research Call Number

JFE 21-724

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