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FURMANEK (REVISED) CONCEPT MAP, Palumbo-Liu: To gain a sense of the…

- - - - denial of subjectivity plays out in Western treatment of the Eastern psyche ("those are white tears," tidying up history)
        rejection of/ control over affective expressions involved in the objectification of subject
        
        (See 'puppetry' of Pscyhe thread)
      - de Beauvoir on patriarchy-- man posits himself as subject and creates a fantasy of woman as other as a means of affirming his own subjectivity---in the Western world, the individual's subject hood is validated by frameworks which deprive others of this same subjectivity
        
        This framework points to the toxicity of Western notions of individuality---In being of a shared body, do Lai's Grist sisters escape this violent dichotomy of 'subject' and 'other' ?
      - Simmons' love doll is an object that lives as a subject
        
        Rather, it is the performance of subjecthood, imposed upon an Asiatic figure by a white woman
        
        Said's idea of the Orient as a "surrogate self" for the Occident becomes relevant again
        
        An inversion of 'perihumanity' that is later reinforced when the humanized love doll is rendered an object again when it is brought into the fold of the Geisha stereotype
    - - Can this 'encrusting' phenomenon be reclaimed as a sort of armor?
        
        in Fox Girl makeup is a sort of armor, makeup has an objectifying quality which erases the person behind it from the Western gaze, this invisibility can be used for self-preservation
        
        I am reminded of Shmizu's reworking of the bind of hypersexuality
    - - Cheng "the ornament animates major strains of modernist thinking about gender, nationhood, the human, and the inhuman, in the senses of racial difference as well as synthetic fabrication.
        
        I think Fox Girl and The Tiger Flu are both interesting texts to analyze through this lense, both are seated in settings in which modernity is confronted explicitly, in the case of Fox Girl, we are asked to contend with colonial war in a Nuclear Age, and in Tiger Flu we confront questions of humanity in a dystopian future
  - - - The opposite of penetration: forcing something inside, rather than something forcing its way inside
        
        Hyun Jin's eating of the hot dog as a simultaneously empowering and degrading moment. The phallic symbol of Western invasion is taken in in a manner that is reminiscent of the violence that is to come, but also signifies her ability to sustain herself and persevere
    - - In Carnal Orient it is the white spectators who are cannibals, if we note the similarities between the preparation of the chicken and the peeling of the dancer's makeup, underneath which they find a man like themselves.
- - - - Butler and citation, note the power of utterances which are recurrent in a given society, every word is a citation and its usage helps to set precedents that can determine meaning
        
        Shmizu: "Love her or leave her, the hyper sexual Asian woman in representation haunts the experiences and perceptions of Asian women across different contexts." 16
        
        successful texts contend with binding forces of the Oriental gaze and invert them
        
        Inversion In:
        
        Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous the power of the deer who stands still rather than taking flight
        
        Lai's Grist sisters who take pride in their non-human status
        
        Pride or Joy in being cast 'outside' an established normativity whose 'inside' demands violence and erasure
        
        What happens when usual scripts are made to appear in new contexts?
        M Butterfly:
        "her mouth says no, but her eyes say yes. the West believes the East, deep down, wants to be dominated--because a woman can't think for herself" (83) Later, Song weaponizes a script meant to bind her as a means of seizing power from Gallimard: "You know something, Rene? Your mouth says no, but your eyes say yes"(87)
    - - Chen: "Language's status among creatures" used "as a register of intelligence, judgement, and subjectvity"
        
        beings who have language are granted humanity, but those who don't have the '"right" kind of language are denied humanity
        ie. Ong "Oral Whitening Rinse" which "noticeably whitens speech"
        
        Serlin notes that the Hiroshima maidens were assessed based on their agreeability as well as their ability to speak English, having the "right" kind of language makes one more apt to be granted personhood amongst hierarchies of animacy
        
        But This Is Your Life makes the Hiroshima maidens into puppets: they are mere silhouettes on a screen, their words are "translated" by the host--the show actually puts words into their mouth
        
        the puppetry of Carnal Orient whose dancer moves robotically and according to the "strings" of Orientalism
        
        Laurie Simmon's Love Doll is also made into a puppet of human-ness
        
        M Butterfly song 'animates' herself as a living fantasy for Western male gaze, but as the self-animating puppet, Song remains an agent and is able to invert the power of Oriental narratives to disempower the colonizer
  - - - the "other' as a hollow vessel, filled by the needs of fantasy
    - - Pan is told that her tears are "white" in Sui Sin Far's "Its Wavering Image
      - Ong's "mutable" bottle with image of Ong's mother dressed as a non-existent son, the connection between 'mute' and 'mutant' speaks to the ways in which the silencing of another is meant to serve someone else, erasure enacted in order to make 'space' for some other purpose or form
  - - - positive affect used to feed a fantasy of control for the Occident. to mitigate perceived threat of the Orient
        It seems Daughter of the Dragon expresses anxiety over this positive affect, meant to offer warning of the 'dragon lady' lurking behind the 'lotus blossom'
        
        The 'soft' 'loving' or 'cute' Asiatic woman therefore stands as a cite of anxiety in the Western racial imaginary
- - - - Occidental constructions of hierarchy
  - - - London renders political entities as imaginary bodies, Japan is feminized in The Unparalleled Invasion to point to its supposed 'softness'
      - In M Butterfly Song's character manages to penetrate the Occident as a spy, they use softness to penetrate and therefore subvert this soft-hard paradigm
- - - - Compassion as 'positive affect"
        
        Like cuteness, this manufactured "compassion" in dictated by a fantasy of power imbalance. The fact that grounds for compassion are made through the fabrication of spectacle is also worth considering.
        This American audience is actually feeling shame, as they are confronted with the realities of Hiroshima. This making of a "spectacle" deflects feelings of shame and places it onto the Hiroshima maidens
        
        Said 'the Orient' as a surrogate self to 'Occident'
        
        Bow racist cute as positive affect, grounded in imagined power imbalance
  - - - "lotus blossom" soft, fragile. etc, is a trope that infantalizes the Orient. This infantalization frames the idea of a "frozen" East, being stuck in time is like being stuck developmentally, casting the Orient into the past characterizes the imagined Eastern entity as childlike, "innocent"
        
        This innocence is reclaimed in Fox Girl when MiuMiu is born, where a child of refugees becomes a symbol of hope and new beginnings. The infant, the vulnerable being, is not a cite of violence but of hope, her innocence is a treasure for Hyun Jin but not a commodity for others
      - "dragon lady" cold, militaristic, threatening ---> trope resembles the dystopia of a techno-oriental world
        
        Said 'Orient' as surrogate self to 'Occident', being the first to use nuclear weapons, the American West resembles a world in which technology has expanded beyond reasonable control, these charges are projected onto the Orient
  - - - the white, heterosexual couple as an image of continuity for Western empire, as well as an emblem of normativity
        
        The Cheat Final court scene closes with a reaffirmation of the marriage, Edith + husband walk out hand-in-hand
        
        Reproduction can signify the future, one's right to reproduce is an expression of one's right to a future, to continue
        
        This is why Hyun Jin's decision to raise MiuMiu is so important, she is investing in a future for herself and the people she cares for, reclaiming a right to life which colonization has tried to take from them
        
        London paints the fecundity of the political 'body' of China as a serious threat to the West. The Western impulse to combat this fertility is another attempt to colonize/take control of the future.
        
        Daughter of the Dragon Jane and Petri are reunified in the end
        
        This is Your Life the shampoo commercial, flirtatious exchange between white host and hostess to 'close out' the show
    - - This is Your Life takes control of the narrative time and again; the Hiroshima maidens are asked to speak behind a curtain and the host "translates"
      - Combatting the colonization of history is its reclamation, Moraga's preface to This Bridge Called My Back cites a long history of struggle and activism
        
        ancestry is as meaningful as fertility, claims to the past are an important part of community/wholeness
        
        Lai's Grist sisters site the knowledge of their ancestors time and again. Auntie Radix is an especially interesting crux for the Grist sisters' claims to both future and past: she is the oldest member of the community AND the last Doubler
- - - - Palumbo-Liu attempts to make this space more fluid and therefore inhabitable with the grammatical structure of Asian/American
      - Sui Sin-Far speaks to the challenge of being between in "From the Mental Leaves of a Eurasian"