The Minor Intimacies of Race: Asian Publics in North America
Christine Kim
Abstract
An attempt to put an Asian woman on Canada's $100 bill in 2012 unleashed enormous controversy. The racism and xenophobia that answered this symbolic move toward inclusiveness revealed the nation's trumpeted commitment to multiculturalism as a lie. It also showed how multiple minor publics as well as the dominant public responded to the ongoing issue of race in Canada. This book delves into the ways cultural conversations minimize race's relevance even as violent expressions and structural forms of racism continue to occur. The book turns to literary texts, artistic works, and media debates to ... More
An attempt to put an Asian woman on Canada's $100 bill in 2012 unleashed enormous controversy. The racism and xenophobia that answered this symbolic move toward inclusiveness revealed the nation's trumpeted commitment to multiculturalism as a lie. It also showed how multiple minor publics as well as the dominant public responded to the ongoing issue of race in Canada. This book delves into the ways cultural conversations minimize race's relevance even as violent expressions and structural forms of racism continue to occur. The book turns to literary texts, artistic works, and media debates to highlight the struggles of minor publics with social intimacy. Its insightful engagement with everyday conversations as well as artistic expressions that invoke the figure of the Asian enables the book to reveal the affective dimensions of racialized publics. It also extends ongoing critical conversations within Asian Canadian and Asian American studies about Orientalism, diasporic memory, racialized citizenship, and migration and human rights.
Keywords:
multiculturalism,
Canada,
Asian woman,
racism,
racialized publics,
Orientalism,
diasporic memory,
racialized citizenship,
migration,
human rights
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780252040139 |
| Published to Illinois Scholarship Online: April 2017 |
DOI:10.5406/illinois/9780252040139.001.0001 |
