Beyond Postcolonial Theory

Juan, E. San

doi:10.1007/978-1-349-61657-2

Cited by 131 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…The meanings of "America" should be as varied as the country's culturally and racially diverse makeup, yet "American" typically is imagined as "White" (Goodwin, 2003;Lee, 2005;Ngo, 2010;San Juan, Jr., 1998;Takaki, 1989) or "Western" (Maeda, 2000). While this construction of a white America rests on a variety of factors, the perception of Asians as not American owes its legacy in part to the long history of exclusionary immigration laws that targeted different Asian groups, beginning with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act barring the entry of people of Chinese descent.…”

Section: Api Immigrants and The Us Socio-political Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Curriculum as Colonizer: (Asian) American Education in the Current U.S. Context

Goodwin

2010

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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Background/Context The United States is currently undergoing a period of unprecedented immigration, with the majority of new arrivals coming from Asia and Latin America, not Europe. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (APIs) represent the fastest growing racial group in the United States, and schools are again being asked to socialize newcomer students, many of whom are APIs. Yet, even as the United States becomes more racially diverse, the national mindset regarding immigrants and immigration ranges from ambivalent to increasingly (and currently) hostile, and is often contradictory. “American” typically is imagined as “White,” and perceptions of APIs and people of color as “other” remain cemented in our collective psyche. It is this sociohistorical-political context that frames the education and socialization of Asian American citizens, immigrants, and their children. Objective/Focus As APIs are absorbed into the fabric of society, how will they define themselves? How will they be defined? This article begins by deconstructing the social category Asian and Pacific Islander in order to reveal the immense diversity contained under this label. The discussion illuminates both the horizontal diversity of APIs—differences between ethnic groups, and vertical diversity—differences within ethnic groups, to underscore the insufficiency of the API label. Against the diverse backdrop that APIs truly (re)present, (Asian) American education framed by three curricular contexts in the United States—the major reforms of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, culturally relevant pedagogy, and the “model minority” mythology—is theorized using postcolonial theory as an analytic lens. The article concludes with thoughts on how APIs can resist domination and what might be sites of resistance in schools or society. Research Design This is an analytic essay that examines both historical and contemporary educational and policy contexts. Conclusions/Recommendations Curriculum, defined not simply as subject matter content and instructional procedures, but as a tool of acculturation and a depository of (U.S.) national and cultural values, has the power to emancipate or colonize. Each of the three curricular contexts in the United States—the major reforms of the No Child Left Behind Act, culturally relevant pedagogy, and the “model minority” mythology—exemplify the role Curriculum plays in defining, silencing, and/or marginalizing APIs. Imagined sites of resistance against Curriculum as colonizer include this very page, where one voice deliberately pushes back against the obfuscation of fixed realities layered onto people of Asian descent in the United States, the reexamination and revision(ing) of teacher preparation curricula, and the larger policy arena.

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Section: Api Immigrants and The Us Socio-political Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Curriculum as Colonizer: (Asian) American Education in the Current U.S. Context

Goodwin

2010

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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“…Denouncing the "[p]ostcolonial ventriloquism [that] has even ventured to deprive subalterns of speech", San Juan goes further to expose both what he terms "the platitudes of fundamentalist postcolonialism" and "paltry essentialisms and indulgence in the Euro-American immigrant syndrome" that he fi nds indiscriminately extended to other "immigrant" writing. 4 Diasporic as well as postcolonial fi ction is specifi cally vulnerable to, while it also particularly profi ts from, the growing marketability of any kind of multiplicity. Food metaphors, with their inherent linkage of culture and consumption, involving diversity and mixing (fusion food as a mockery of edible hybridity), necessarily invite interpretation as expressions of cultural diversity.…”

Section: Dishing Up Diaspora: Multicultural Consumption At the International Book Marketmentioning

confidence: 99%

Boutique Multiculturalism and the Consumption of Repulsion: Re-Disseminating Food Fictions in Malaysian and Singaporean Diasporic Novels

Wagner

2007

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature

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Food metaphors are among the most vexing clichés of postcolonial and diasporic fi ction. But even as they help to promote the marketability of the multicultural, their renegotiation in more self-refl ective writing has recently begun to engender new food fi ctions that capitalize on repulsion as a form of resistance to this demand for self-Orientalization. The curious retention of a marketable exoticizing of food that is indeed as often symbolic, to be rejected, as to be eaten, signifi cantly articulates the growing unease caused by the commercial and ideological exploitation of "boutique multiculturalism" at large, as food symbolism itself acts as a metonym for the consumable exotic. In revaluating the literary potentials of self-irony in the representation of consumption and repulsion as two sides of the same coin, this article draws on diasporic fi ction set in Malaysia, Singapore and Australia, including Hsu-Ming Teo's Behind the Moon (2005), Vyvyanne Loh's Breaking the Tongue (2004), and Josephine Chia's growing list of autobiographical novels.

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“…Initially, postcolonial theorists expressed concern that loosening these theories from their historical meaning of colonialism may be colonising in itself (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin 1989). This was a note of caution that needed to be considered in appropriating a postcolonial lens, yet in more recent times postcolonial writers themselves have been subject to criticism for their focus on textual analysis of postcolonial literature rather than engagement with the struggles of real life (Quayson and Goldberg 2002;San Juan 1998). A postcolonial lens provided an opportunity to engage with the everyday struggles of nurses trying to provide culturally appropriate care.…”

Section: Constructing a Feminist Postcolonial Lensmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural frameworks of nursing practice: exposing an exclusionary healthcare culture

Blackford

2003

Nursing Inquiry

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Drawing on a feminist praxis study in which nurses were asked to explore their experiences in caring for people of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, cultural frameworks bounded by interconnected markers of race, ethnicity and gender were constructed to analyse the nurses' narrative accounts. The aims of this paper are to discuss the analytical framework that draws on black feminist and postcolonial writers used to examine the cultural constructions of nursing practice. It will also draw attention to one of the major findings of the study in which, through this analytical process, broader connections between health and multicultural government policies, institutional structures and the microcosm of nursing practice were exposed. Through this analysis, an exclusionary whitecentric healthcare culture was exposed, which rendered people of non-English speaking background invisible.

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Beyond Postcolonial Theory

Cited by 131 publications

References 0 publications

Curriculum as Colonizer: (Asian) American Education in the Current U.S. Context

Curriculum as Colonizer: (Asian) American Education in the Current U.S. Context

Boutique Multiculturalism and the Consumption of Repulsion: Re-Disseminating Food Fictions in Malaysian and Singaporean Diasporic Novels

Cultural frameworks of nursing practice: exposing an exclusionary healthcare culture

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