| dc.description.abstract | Taking the two novels and one film as the primary texts to look into their interpretations of Asian subjects’ identity problems, this thesis examines how the question of race is normalized as a frame to mark certain people and group as “racial others” under colonial/imperial governance to limit their expression of selves and retain the exclusionary violence toward them. Despite the fact
that the genre and the timeline of the stories are different in the three texts, they share the similar concerns to speak for the marginal and racialized subjects that discloses how racialized identities are
devalued and foreclosed from the social mechanisms under the predominant colonial/imperial governance. By such representation, these texts do not merely articulate the protagonists’ relatively difficult conditions in their search for identity; rather, they narrate the challenging and subversive forces to examine how race may hinder the navigation of their autonomy, self-expression, and
individuality in the liberal governance. This thesis examines how these protagonists understand their manipulated conditions through politics as the means to navigate and negotiate their identities in the determined historical narratives of colonialism and imperialism. By investigating the colonial/imperial representations of certain historical events, Asian subjects, migration, and social conventions and stratification, this thesis traces the past history of Asian immigrants under the colonial/imperial governance to see what the interlocking factors and entailed myths establish the Western-oriented social institutions and de-contextualize the value, devotion, individuality, and expression of ethnic populations. In doing so, this thesis hopes to interpret how those racialized Asian subjects in the hegemonic context can narrate their stories as self-oriented and subjectivize themselves to challenge and rethink the defined historical narrative.
Keywords: Race, identity, autonomy, individuality, Asian subjects, Japanese American internment, intimacy, exclusionary violence, assimilation, ethnicity, colonial governance, imperialism. | en_US |