Organizer: Rosalind Morris, Columbia University
Discussants: Oscar V. Campomanes, University of California, Berkeley; Tani E.
Barlow, University of Washington; Colleen Lye, Columbia University; Margo
Okazawa-Rey, San Francisco State University
From the beginning of this century, a number of prominent American politicians, university professors, leaders of public institutions, and corporate heads have argued that America's destiny lay in the Pacific. One result of this rhetoric has been to figure Asia as a critical object in American strategic, economic, and intellectual thinking. It has also, in the process, produced various "Asias," not all of which are compatible with one another.
The concern of this roundtable is with the processes of mediation that have constructed Asia in specific ways for American consumption. Sites where such construction has occurred include the editorial rooms of newspaper, magazine, and book publishers, government agencies, corporations, congressional committees, museums, pulp fiction and comic books, university libraries and cataloguing systems, and area studies programs. While these agencies may be understood as "public," "private," or "secret," what they share is the capacity to make over Asian "facts" and redeploy Asias in the service of American interests.
Rather than simply dealing with "representations" or the "truth" of Asia, the members of this roundtable will examine some of these sites of production, their pivotal role in mediating Asia, and the texts and images that result. We will pay particular attention to the production of Asias within popular culture, and explore the theoretical implications of the intersection of the popular with various forms of "official" or "expert" knowledge.