Representational Politics in the Film Series “Asian Americans”: The Contestation of Identity Essentialism

Abstract

This paper highlights counternarratives of identity essentialism (re)producing representational conflations to normalize the existing system of social hierarchies. Analyzing anti-hegemonic discourses of identity in the film series “Asian Americans”, I propound how anti-essentialist critiques work as a rhetorical vehicle for constructing coalitional possibilities. This essay reinstates the importance of deconstructing binary logics in understanding social and cultural relations regulating Asian/American derogatory representations. Unpacking the invisibility of ideological power in administering representational strategies, this essay employs intersectional lenses to visualize the contradiction of Asian/American politics reclaimed by the dynamic integration of capitalism, transnationalism, imperialist militarism, and racially sexual fetishism. Representational complexity thus becomes a modality of analytic unveiling the presence of power relations in racially gendering Asian/Americans.