Page 23 - On Not Speaking Chinese Living Between Asia and the West

INTRODUCTION

strategy among those who have never quite belonged, or have been made to feel
that they do not quite belong in the West.
The wildly preferred name for that symbolic capital, in recent years, has been
diaspora. In this era of globalization, it is diasporic identity politics in which millions
of migrants throughout the West (and beyond) have invested their passion and their
fealty. In light of global power relations, the significance of diasporic identity resides
in its force as a symbolic declaration of liberation from the abject position of ‘ethnic
minority’ in ‘an oppressive national hegemony’ (Clifford 1997: 255). As James
Clifford (ibid.) has remarked, ‘diasporic identifications reach beyond ethnic status
within the composite, liberal state’, imparting a ‘sense of being a “people” with
historical roots and destinies outside the time/space of the host nation’. In this
sense, diasporic identity holds the promise of being part of a world-historical
political/cultural formation, such as ‘China’, ‘Asia’ or ‘Africa’, which may be
able to turn the tables on the West, at least in the imagination. It is undeniable,
then, that the idea of diaspora is an occasion for positive identification for many,
providing a sense of grandiose transnational belonging and connection with
dispersed others of similar historical origins. In my own experience, this reaching
back to one’s ancestral ‘roots’ can be a powerful, almost utopian emotive pull.
But notwithstanding the benefits, what are the costs of diasporic identity?
In the course of writing the chapters of Part I of this book, I have become
increasingly reluctant to join the chorus of celebrating the idea of diaspora. Indeed,
it is important, I would argue, to recognize the double-edgedness of diasporic
identity: it can be the site of both support and oppression, emancipation and
confinement. The Chinese diaspora, especially, has by virtue of its sheer critical
mass, global range and mythical might evinced an enormous power to operate
as a magnet for anyone who can somehow be identified as ‘Chinese’ – no matter
how remote the ancestral links. The contradictory politics of this global diasporic
pulling power – as embodied in Tu Wei-ming’s famed but controversial ‘cultural
China’ project – is the subject of Chapter 2, ‘Can one say no to Chineseness?’ I
argue that as ‘China’ and ‘Chineseness’ are increasingly becoming signs for global
political and economic power in the early twenty-first century, there is no necessary
political rightousness in Chinese diasporic identity, the long-standing Chinese
tradition of feeling victimized and traumatized notwithstanding. Indeed, there
could well be circumstances and predicaments in which it would be politically more
pertinent to say no to a particularist Chinese identity, at least if our commitment
is a universalist and cosmopolitan one, encompassing all people of the world,
not just ‘our own’. In the Asian context, in South-East Asia especially, the stakes
are quite clear: it is well known that so-called overseas Chinese entrepreneurs
– card-carrying members of the Chinese diaspora – are the key operators behind
the region’s economic growth, which is reflected in their relative wealth and
affluence but also in the tradition of suspicion which historically has grown against
them since colonial times. In this context, to this day, Chinese identity is never a
simple issue: it is both an expression of political marginalization in the postcolonial
nation–state and an indication of (real and imagined) economic privilege.

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