Forging a positivist identity for the so-called Chinese community in Britain, America, Canada, or in other Western-industrial nations is completely problematic. It is problematic because what dominates in this identity-making process, facilitated by ourselves or by others, is homogeneity. Ethnicities in general discourse are seen as homogeneous - within an uncritical mass, heterogeneity and pluarality (multiculturalism for that matter) is compulsively denied. The key here, to escape the quagmire of calling them or ourselves racist by label, is to dismantle the concept of a reified consciousness. What I mean here is a consciousness that is made static and circulated for everyone to consume. Stereotypes and racism depend on this, on all levels. Racism is empowered by this circulation of imposed and marketed cultural mindsets.

This brings me to a further point. It is a given drive to look for a single, all embracing one-fit-all identity for any group, especially the Chinese in Western nations. I have seen many of such groups, and fortunately, I am never a member of them. Concretely, it is the Chinese that are arguably the most heterogeneous ethnic group in this postmodernist society. How could you find discursive similarities among a caterer, a newscaster, a bus driver, an educator, an action star, an author, a protestor, a criminal, a gangster, or even one who just fell off the window yesterday? Would you invite all these different characters into a single community group?

I cannot be affirmative here. The actual quagmire is that the Chinese are consistently marketed as this homogeneous group, empowered by martial arts stars, nourished by the take-away, and obsessed, in an Oedipal fashion, (probably sexually) with their mothers and fathers. It is this commodity that has been accepted, by the Chinese and by other groups. Sadly, we may be even biologically engineered to adopt such native characteristics - it is this accusation that is probably circulated among, most of all, conservative politicians. The application of bodies, of bodily elements, critically denies the power that statements make on the body. How do we find such people in these different roles at all? The body is a canvas upon which discourse is written. It is discourse, not bodies, that forge our different positions and roles. We only choose to follow any given set of rules. I think the Chinese have freely chosen to choose their subjectivities very well, given the postmodernist dynamism that saturates our world and our culture, whatever that is.

But why does reified consciousness firmly remain? In this world of perpetrators and victims, I think we have always been victims of the very concept of the nation. What is a nation? A nation is an imposed concept that affirms the homogeneity and identity of a political space. It is established, unfortunately, by political football, or at its most extreme, by warfare. How must a nation survive? This is where racism is essential to explore this inquiry. What is racism? Regretfully, racism is a technology. It is a technical framework put to work to ensure the survival of a political body within a confined geographical space, or an empire. Racism is neither a religious sin, nor a malfunction of our best critical thinking. Just like how fighter planes and tanks and infantry kept America from being dominated by its enemies, racism is such that justified weaponry. In effect, it maintains reified consciousness. It allows stereotypes, or even knowledge for that matter, to be freely sold in this marketplace.

The best political powers took advantage of that very technology to inflict traumatic damage upon our heritage - from the British colonial pursuits in the 19th century to the American Sinophobia that is taking shape to this day (and I must include here Hollywood's marketing of Chinese stereotypes). It is this classified static box of knowledge that is put into play to enact this very system of marginalization. Racism takes bodies into account - it degrades certain bodies to ensure national security. One good example here is the Chinese Exclusion Acts in America during the early 20th century, or even the Nuremburg laws against Jews. In short, technology is able to classify sets of bodies so that one shoud be more apt to survive than the other. Again, it is reified consciousness at work.

Then what are the stakes in a possible forthcoming project? I would suggest a few pointers. We need to quit forging single, unifying identities for any group identity projects we forge. Reified consciousness only ignites more racism, rather than searching to bring a voice into the general discourse. It only fuels the technology that forces us to remain the prey of the perpetrators. We need to be carefully aware of the trap called the personal. For us, the personal (our family, our heritage, our physiognomy) has been exploited to a certain extent where I argue against those stereotypes that are baked. I find the insignia in many Chinese restaurants very repulsive, because, they are, after all, colonial whorehouses. But that will be argued in another commentary. For our critical and intellectual survival, we must travel beyond the confines of our households, even our families. If we affirm the view that the world of discourse complicates the identities we are trying to forge, then I suggest that we should ditch the our whole obsession with identity altogether.

To complicate ourselves, our discursive selves, is so far the best prevention against the damaging effects of the racist technology. Now the project here is to make that racism machine an obsolete relic. Racism, I must accentuate, is not a sin or even an evil, and we should not engage in a battle of good against evil for the survival of justice. This battle is radically different. This war we are fighting is, I believe, for, actually, the critical progress of humanity. Thus, I do hope that someday we do not have to use the concepts of British, American, German, Jewish, or even Chinese any further. Those concepts, those examples of reified consciousness, will only provoke perpetual warfare.

Rick Chan
Seattle, USA
University of Washington

 

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