Inter-Asia Cultural Studies: Movements
Volume 18，Number 4，December 2017
（《亞際文化研究》2017年第4期）
Editorial statement
Kuan-Hsing Chen & Chua Beng Huat
Essays
Cultural politics of emotions in households: migrant domestic workers in Macau
Wei SHI
ABSTRACT: This article discusses the emotions and cultural politics within domestic work contexts involving employers and migrant domestic workers in Macau. Since Macau was transferred back to China from Portugal in 1999, the Macau SAR government has pursued a neoliberal economic policy that emphasizes economic growth. With a revitalized economy boosted by casino revenues, thousands of migrant workers have moved to Macau to take advantage of new employment opportunities. Based on first-hand interviews with migrant domestic workers and employers in Macau, this paper examines how emotions are motivated and articulated within the affective interactions between employers and Migrant Domestic Workers (MDWs). This includes how employers’ emotions of fear and disgust towards MDWs contribute to the creation of an MDW population as a feared and inferior “other,” and how such affective operations reinforces the existing hegemonic dominance of naming and legitimizing the exploitation of MDWs. Meanwhile, in the production of domesticity in the home, this paper explores how emotions such as emotional numbness and disgust experienced by the MDWs make affective negotiations and contestation possible, and generate disobedience and resistance to the disciplines and controls imposed upon them. This article also investigates how such emotions, acting as a kind of intervention, operate within the production of specific subjectivities and identities that MDWs want to claim for themselves.
KEYWORDS: Migrant domestic workers, emotion, cultural politics, households, Macau
Our city of colours: queer/Asian publics in transpacific Vancouver
Helen Hok-Sze LEUNG
ABSTRACT: This article examines the contested relation between discourses of ethnic subjectivity and queer critique of homophobia and transphobia in Vancouver, a transpacific city in Canada that is being touted as “the most Asian city outside of Asia.” I analyse the perceived association of Chinese communities with moral conservatism and the concomitant existence of a vibrant queer Asian cultural scene in the city as a discursive clash between two cultural publics. I examine the underlying dynamics of their antagonism as well as their potential for mutual engagement.
KEYWORDS: Queer, Asian migration, transpacific, Vancouver
Korean-War celebrities between global capital and regional nationalisms
Olga FEDORENKO
ABSTRACT: This article examines conflicts over the transnationalization of South Korean celebrities in the wake of the Korean Wave (Hallyu) in the twenty-first century. I consider a number of celebrity controversies to argue that the demands placed upon Hallyu celebrities by domestic observers, foreign audiences, and global capital are fundamentally irreconcilable. South Korean nationalist appropriation of Hallyu, as well as the local celebrity culture, demand that Hallyu stars firstly be exemplary Korean patriots, whereas international audiences expect sympathy for their own causes. Local nationalist agendas have proven particularly troublesome because of postcolonial sensibilities and ongoing territorial disagreements between South Korea and its neighbors. Finally, as circulating commodities and commercial assets, Hallyu stars are also pledged to global capital. Their value is highest when they appeal to as broad an audience as possible and alienate no one with their politics. An apolitical neutrality on regionally controversial issues, however, is an untenable position when antagonistic geopolitical interests are concerned and nationalist passions flare. I situate this argument within critical scholarship on cultural globalization flows within Asia, while engaging celebrity studies to frame Hallyu stars as transnational commodities.
KEYWORDS: Transnational celebrity, Korean Wave (Hallyu), nationalism, South Korean celebrity culture, global culture industry, K-idols
Performing Bandung: China’s dance diplomacy with India, Indonesia, and Burma, 1953-1962
Emily WILCOX
ABSTRACT: While dance was a common element of international diplomacy activities around the world during the 1950s and early 1960s, scholars have only recently begun to focus attention on this topic, especially as it concerns relationships forged beyond those of the Cold War superpowers. Using previously unexamined historical materials such as rare photographs and performance programs, dancer biographies, autobiographies and personal interviews, unpublished institutional histories, and contemporary periodicals, this article demonstrates not only that dance was an integral part of China’s inter-Asian cultural exchange between 1953 and 1962, but also that the PRC developed a distinct approach to dance diplomacy. Through a series of exchanges with India, Indonesia and Burma, China’s foreign ministers and dancers developed and refined a method of dance diplomacy in which the primary goal was to learn from, rather than export to, these neighboring countries. This approach harnessed the affective power of embodied aesthetic culture to literally “perform” Bandung ideals, namely, cooperation and mutual respect among Asian nations and an anti-imperialist cultural stance. Through the establishment in 1962 of the Oriental Song and Dance Ensemble, the PRC institutionalized this model of dance diplomacy, expanding it to include the entire Third World. Bandung-era dance diplomacy initiatives of the 1950s and early 1960s not only supported important new international alliances and political movements, but also asserted China’s self-identity as part of the East in the way that challenged Eurocentric ideals previously entrenched in China’s domestic dance field.
KEYWORDS: Dance diplomacy, Bandung, China, India, Indonesia, Burma, performance, cultural exchange
Planting virtual lemons: performing forest protection in the context of political performativity
Catherine DIAMOND
ABSTRACT: The socialist People’s Democratic Republic of Laos (Lao PDR) has some of the largest intact forests in Southeast Asia, yet these are being quickly depleted by illegal logging, slash-and-burn farming, increasing population pressures, monocrop plantations, mining and dam building. Foreign government and nongovernmental organizations stage “infotainment” theatre plays to educate and inform the Lao public of its role in protecting the forests even though government projects and concessions are the primary causes of forest destruction. Because all the nationally subsidized performing arts troupes are government mouthpieces they cannot critique the government’s role. Foreign aid agencies funding the dramas are also made complicit in the hypocrisy of promoting forest protection to those with the least power to do so, while both performers and spectators know who is profiting the most from the sale of forest products. This article examines theatrical performances regarding forest protection presented in this context of performativity in which the state manipulates socialist rhetoric to conceal its actions that enrich its officials and capitalist partners at the expense of the rest of the Lao public.
KEYWORDS: Southeast Asia, forests, spoken drama, Laos, deforestation, slash-and-burn, Hmong, performance, socialist realism, applied theatre, infotainment
Desiring singlehood? Rural migrant women and affective labour in the Shanghai beauty parlour industry
Penn Tsz Ting IP
ABSTRACT: This article studies rural migrant women working in the Shanghai beauty parlour industry, focusing on how this industry emphasises affective labour and articulates it along lines of migration, gender and seniority. The analysis looks at three types of female beauty workers: apprentices, senior beauticians, and entrepreneurs. Bringing together Hardt and Negri’s (2004) theorisation of affective labour and Yang Jie’s (2011) notion of aesthetic labour, this article investigates how the affective and aesthetic labour demanded from these migrant women affects their minds and bodies, and their position and value in the marriage market. On the basis of fieldwork conducted in Shanghai, the article begins by exploring the ways in which the demand of Shanghai beauty parlour industry for affective labour impacts the ability of rural migrant women to enter into other forms of affective relationships. It goes on to argue that affective labour in this industry is not wholly negative, but modifies bodies and minds in ways that can be both oppressive and enabling, depending on, among other things, the beauty worker’s level of seniority. Finally, the article proposes that, in the beauty parlour industry, there is a reciprocality with affective labour that includes the workers as well as the clients.
KEYWORDS: Shanghai, rural migrant women, singlehood, affective labour, aesthetic labour, beauty parlour industry
Visual essay
In the beginning was the poster
Alit AMBARA
Historicizing
Anti-Communist moving images and Cold War ideology: on the Malayan Film Unit
Wai Siam HEE
ABSTRACT: The Malayan Film Unit (MFU), a film organization affiliated to the British colonial government, produced a large number of anti-communist films accompanied by multilingual recordings and commentaries. The ultimate goal of the MFU was to interpellate Malayan identity in order to eradicate the threat posed by communist ideology during the Cold War era. This article considers films made by the MFU alongside Cold War archival materials gathered from the UK and Singapore, and reportage on the MFU in the US, UK and local newspapers of the time. It will explore how Malayan communists and Chinese New Villages settlers were represented in semi-realistic/semi-fictional moving images during the Cold War period. This article aims to reconsider the question of whether the aim of the MFU really was to hasten the end of empire, or if it was an extension of the imperialist machinery of state in South-East Asia.
KEYWORDS: Malaya, Malayan communists, Malayan Film Unit, Cold War, New Villages
Mediation
Transitional justice in Myanmar: fragments of quieted voices
Stewart Manley
ABSTRACT: This creative piece combines non-fiction, poetry and fiction to imagine the voices of a refugee, a market vendor, a soldier and a dissident addressing the question of transitional justice in Myanmar. Drawing primarily from my experiences working with Burmese lawyers and refugees on the Thailand–Myanmar border, the piece first provides an overview of transitional justice efforts in Myanmar, and then shifts to voices inspired by people whom I met along the way – in refugee camps, selling vegetables, recovering from prison. Transitional justice too often ignores these quieter voices. The voices that I attempt to capture, however, are frustratingly unhelpful, frequently evasive and largely ambivalent about justice. I expected passionate condemnation of past wrongs and outrage at government abuse. The quieter voices defied my expectations. The poetry and vignettes, therefore, reflect a more nuanced, lyrical perspective that partially surrenders to the passing of time and the powerlessness that people feel in the face of distant authority.
KEYWORDS: Transitional justice, Myanmar, human rights, refugees, rule of law
New Conjuncture
Ancestors and orphan ghosts: Henhua Salvation Rituals of the festival of universal deliverance of the seventh lunar month in Malaysia
Li ZHENG
ABSTRACT: Based on field observations and textual analysis of the Salvation Ritual of the Henghua community (those from Xinghua) in Seremban, Malaysia, this article studies mechanisms of cultural transfer and localization strategies in overseas Chinese communities. In Xinghua, ancestors and orphan ghosts are worshiped according to different ritual traditions. Worshiping ancestors is usually done during the Zhongyuan Festival (in the seventh lunar month), and worshiping orphan ghosts is usually reserved for the Xiayuan Festival (in the tenth lunar month). However, the Salvation Ritual of the Henghua community in Seremban is different: it worships not only ancestors, but also orphan ghosts. Worshiping ancestors is a continuation of the Zhongyuan ritual tradition in Xinghua, and worshiping orphan ghosts is influenced by the tradition of the Hokkien communities in Seremban. As a “mixed” religious ritual, the Salvation Ritual has been adapted to the special historical environment in overseas Chinese communities, and has strengthened the social-cultural networks among fellow members of the same village and lineage.
KEYWORDS: Ancestors, orphan ghosts, Zhongyuan Salvation, Henghua People, Malaysia
On Shanghai’s middle class: a preliminary survey report
ZHU Shanjie
ABSTRACT:In the past 20 years, new concepts and vocabulary have kept emerging to classify and characterize China’s middle class, via cultural symbols related to consumerism. Today, the middle-class culture at its post-nascent state has taken on some new features. The current study, which is based on a survey of the cultural situation of the middle class in Shanghai, found that the new features are mainly manifested in three aspects. First, they like being outdoors, close to nature, doing some extreme sports. Second, being aware of the importance of fitness and wellbeing, they tend to pursue a healthy lifestyle. Third, they all suffer some sort of anxiety. These new features come as a result of three intertwined underlying causes, i.e. the rapid deterioration of the natural environment, the widespread home culture, and the mounting political and economic pressure. Together, they mark a turn in the middle-class culture from external identity to inward physical and mental needs. As Shanghai’s middle-class culture is most representative of that of the country, a basic judgement and preliminary conclusion can be made based on the survey about the cultural situation of the Chinese middle class as a whole.
KEYWORDS: Middle class, cultural situation, anxiety, inward turn
Corrigendum