Model Minority Masochism: Performing the Cultural Politics of Asian American Masculinity

Friday, October 27, -
Speaker(s): Dr. Takeo Rivera
There are few grand narratives that loom over Asian Americans more than the "model minority." While many Asian Americanist scholars and activists aim to disprove the model minority as "myth," Takeo Rivera instead rethinks the model minority as cultural politics. Rather than disproving the model minority, Rivera instead argues that Asian Americans have formulated their racial and gendered subjectivities in relation to what Rivera terms "model minority masochism." Examining Asian American cultural performance across multiple media, from literature and theater to videogames and activist archives, Rivera details two complementary forms of racial masochism: a self-subjugating masochism which embraces the model minority, and its opposite, a self-flagellating masochism that punishes oneself for having been associated with the model minority at all.

In this talk, Rivera focuses on a reexamination of the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin in Detroit, MI and the activist response for justice. Arguing that the historical event inaugurated a particular form of contemporary techno-orientalism through a performative "becoming-car," Rivera considers how model minority ideology looms over the production of Asian American subjectivity that continues to permeate discourse to this day.
Sponsor

Asian American and Diaspora Studies

Model Minority Masochism: Performing the Cultural Politics of Asian American Masculinity

Contact

Uzair, Maira