Research Catalog

Title

On not speaking Chinese : living between Asia and the West / Ien Ang.

Author

Ang, Ien.

Publication

London ; New York : Routledge, 2001.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

x, 230 pages; 25 cm

Summary

"In this new book, cultural thinker Ien Ang engages with urgent questions of identity in an age of globalization and diaspora. The starting-point for Ang's discussion is the experience of visiting Taiwan. Ang, a person of Chinese descent, born in Indonesia and raised in the Netherlands, found herself 'faced with an almost insurmountable difficulty' - surrounded by people who expected her to speak to them in Chinese. She writes: 'It was the beginning of an almost decade-long engagement with the predicaments of "Chineseness" in diaspora. In Taiwan I was different because I couldn't speak Chinese; in the West I was different because I looked Chinese.'" "From this autobiographical beginning, Ang goes on to reflect upon tensions between 'Asia' and 'the West' at a national and global level, and to consider the disparate meanings of 'Chineseness' in the contemporary world. She offers a critique of the increasingly aggressive construction of a global Chineseness, and challenges Western tendencies to equate 'Chinese' with 'Asian' identity." "Ang then turns to 'the West', exploring the paradox of Australia's identity as a 'Western' country in the Asian region, and tracing Australia's uneasy relationship with its Asian neighbours, from the White Australia policy to contemporary multicultural society. Finally, Ang draws together her discussion of 'Asia' and 'the West' to consider the social and intellectual space of the 'in-between', arguing for a theorizing not of 'difference' but of 'togetherness' in contemporary societies."--Jacket.

Subject

• Chinese > Foreign countries > Ethnic identity
• Auswanderung
• Chinesen
• Ethnische Identität
• Identiteit
• Chinezen
• Diaspora
• Multiculturele samenlevingen
• Ethnizität
• Chinese > Western countries > Ethnic identity
• Australien
• Australien
• Chinesen

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 211-225) and index.

Contents

Introduction: between Asia and the West (in complicated entanglement) -- Beyond Asia: deconstructing diaspora -- On not speaking Chinese: diasporic identifications and postmodern ethnicity -- Can one say no to Chineseness?: Pushing the limits of the diasporic paradigm -- Indonesia on my mind: diaspora, the Internet and the struggle for hybridity -- Undoing diaspora: questioning global Chineseness in the era of globalization -- Beyond the West: negotiating multiculturalism -- Multiculturalism in crisis: the new politics of race and national identity in Australia / With Jon Stratton -- Asians in Australia: a contradiction in terms? -- Racial/spatial anxiety: 'Asia' in the psycho-geography of Australian whiteness -- The curse of the smile: ambivalence and the 'Asian' woman in Australian multiculturalism -- Identity blues: rescuing cosmopolitanism in the era of globalization -- Beyond identity: living hybridities -- Local/global negotiations: doing cultural studies at the crossroads -- I'm a feminist but ... : 'other' women and postnational identities -- Conclusion: together-in-difference (the uses and abuses of hybridity).

ISBN

• 0415259126
• 9780415259125
• 0415259134
• 9780415259132
• 9780203996492
• 0203996496

LCCN

2001058889

OCLC

• ocm48551007
• 48551007
• SCSB-1267473

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library