Culture
by
Asian American studies began as the intellectual expression of a political and social movement mobilized to answer questions long suppressed, suspended, or foreclosed in a national imaginary shaped by race and empire. The twin tasks of Asian American studies with regard to culture have been to critique the changing cultural formation of empire and to recuperate critical agency for Asian American cultural production. This essay argues that such a critical approach to culture depends on the recognition of the connection between local cultures and the global historical terrain on which they are produced. This is not to claim that the conditions of material life determine each instance of cultural production but rather to simply acknowledge Karl Marx’s caution that “men make their own history but they do not make it as just as they please” (1951, 103). “Culture” is a shape-shifting word that can signify the whole range of human activity in general, the particular way of life of a group of people, the expression of intellectual and aesthetic sensibilities, or the production of goods, tastes, and meaning itself (Eagleton 2000). For an Asian American studies committed to a recuperation of history and agency, culture must be understood as both...
This essay may be found on page 41 of the printed volume.