Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Perverse Modernities) [Paperback]

David L. Eng (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0822326361 | ISBN-13: 978-0822326366 | Publication Date: March 20, 2001

Racial Castration, the first book to bring together the fields of Asian American studies and psychoanalytic theory, explores the role of sexuality in racial formation and the place of race in sexual identity. David L. Eng examines images—literary, visual, and filmic—that configure past as well as contemporary perceptions of Asian American men as emasculated, homosexualized, or queer.
Eng juxtaposes theortical discussions of Freud, Lacan, and Fanon with critical readings of works by Frank Chin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Lonny Kaneko, David Henry Hwang, Louie Chu, David Wong Louie, Ang Lee, and R. Zamora Linmark. While situating these literary and cultural productions in relation to both psychoanalytic theory and historical events of particular significance for Asian Americans, Eng presents a sustained analysis of dreamwork and photography, the mirror stage and the primal scene, and fetishism and hysteria. In the process, he offers startlingly new interpretations of Asian American masculinity in its connections to immigration exclusion, the building of the transcontinental railroad, the wartime internment of Japanese Americans, multiculturalism, and the model minority myth. After demonstrating the many ways in which Asian American males are haunted and constrained by enduring domestic norms of sexuality and race, Eng analyzes the relationship between Asian American male subjectivity and the larger transnational Asian diaspora. Challenging more conventional understandings of diaspora as organized by race, he instead reconceptualizes it in terms of sexuality and queerness.
Racial Castration will make a landmark contribution to the fields of Asian American studies, psychoanalytic theory, ethnic studies, feminism, queer theory, gay and lesbian studies, postcoloniality, and critical race theory.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“David Eng’s excellent book shows not only how psychoanalysis can—and must—read race but how race revises psychoanalytic theory fundamentally. Wide-ranging and lucid, this work offers a theoretically rich set of cultural readings, making us know in new ways the proximities of racial difference, desire, anxiety, and visual representation.”—Judith Butler, University of California at Berkeley

“With consummate lucidity and analytical skill, David Eng demonstrates how intimately related are Asian American identity and generic U.S. nationality—and how central to both are the contestations of masculine subjectivity. A powerful contribution to Americanist and transnational studies, Racial Castration more generally demonstrates the potential of psychoanalytic theory as an element in rigorous social critique.”—Phillip Brian Harper, New York University

From the Publisher

“David Eng’s excellent book shows not only how psychoanalysis can—and must—read race but how race revises psychoanalytic theory fundamentally. Wide-ranging and lucid, this work offers a theoretically rich set of cultural readings, making us know in new ways the proximities of racial difference, desire, anxiety, and visual representation.”—Judith Butler, University of California at Berkeley

“With consummate lucidity and analytical skill, David Eng demonstrates how intimately related are Asian American identity and generic U.S. nationality—and how central to both are the contestations of masculine subjectivity. A powerful contribution to Americanist and transnational studies, Racial Castration more generally demonstrates the potential of psychoanalytic theory as an element in rigorous social critique.”—Phillip Brian Harper, New York University --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Duke University Press Books (March 20, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822326361
• ISBN-13: 978-0822326366
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,042,844 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars says it like no one else, February 24, 2002

By 

ChefBum "chefbum" (Fremont,, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Perverse Modernities) (Paperback)

I agree largely and almost wholly with the previous and first independent reviewer of this book: Eng's 'Racial Castration' is at times, hyperacademic and perhaps even overly into the realm of philosophy and not social studies. Still, it is a unique, overdue work on the perception of-- and the creation of the perception of-- asian american males in mainstream American society.

I believe that Eng brings up some extremely insightful and heretofore overlooked aspects that are central to 'Asian-american male masculinity' in America. First and foremost is the concept that, as 'queerness' or the 'feminization' of the asian american male is a direct result of the white-male-as-heterosexual-masculine-hegemony. Too often, asian american masculinity and the perception of asian american men in this country deems the denunciation of homosexuality-- 'queerness'-- as essential to acceptance as part of masculine America as a whole. I don't think that any authors to this point have pointed out the inherently intimate relation and intertwining of sexuality and race in this case. To throw out acceptance of gay Asian-America as masculine merely to seek acceptance of "masculine Asian-America" as a whole is a big mistake.

I think that Eng has rightfully pointed out how 'queer' Asian-American males are often left holding the bag as their own Asian-American culture, blind to how 'American culture' as emasculated their own heterosexual men, turns around and rejects the masculinity of their own 'queer' men. And I believe that it is true: Asian American men, queer or straight, face largely the same problems of how their masculinity is perceived in America, and both groups are basically in the same boat in this regard.

Eng's deep delving-- almost reaching?-- into areas that would seemingly be a stretch to relate to his topic (mainly deep psychoanalytical and philosophical theories of the perception/acceptance/rejection of self) are somewhat difficult to grasp, but I believe that they are germane because they do largely reinforce the elusive depth at which stereotypes of asian-american masculinity are adopted, inculcated, and reinforced from outside.

I believe that Eng has quite aptly addressed his stated mission of exploring the 'Racial Castration' of Asian American men in America, and I laud 'Racial Castration' as a theoretically seminal work. It is also aptly named. The only shame is that it will almost certainly be marginalized as 'academia', as it is written to be almost completely inaccesible to the general public, i.e., the average American. And while it does attack the theoretical/philosophical problems of the perception of asian-american masculinity in America, it probably won't do very much in the way of practically addressing what IS inherently an everyday, concrete social and political issue. *Real* social change won't occur in the ivory towers of academia, but with average Americans! Still, if it raises the awareness of even a few individuals who read it, it will have gratifyingly served its purpose.

It has raised mine; and for this reason, this book is a keeper in my collection!

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A rewarding, but very challenging, text, April 5, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Perverse Modernities) (Paperback)

The first thing you'll notice about this book is its long, slender shape and atypical print. This is a big sign of how everything about this book is fresh and unique. Eng's book finally provides a gay male perspective on the burgeoning field of Asian-American studies that Robert Lee and Lisa Lowe have helped to introduce. It also adds an Asian-American take on the growing number of masculinity studies about men of color. Eng employs classic psychological theories to look at how cross-historical cultural works portray Asian-American men. I'm so excited that Eng had the vision to bring this book into existence. However, let the reader by forewarned! Eng is a hardcore, postmodernist, poststructuralist, hyperacademic theorist. I have a degree in gay studies from an Ivy League school and still portions of this book went right over my head. Don't think for a second that you can hand this book to some Asian-American friend just coming out like you could with Helen Zia's "American Dreams" or even Eng's previous book "Q&A". Also, the apolitical or homophobic straight Asian male reader may be upset at how much this book is focused on gay Asian-Am men, rather than Asian-Am men of all sexualities. Still if you enjoy highly scholarly books about gays and lesbians of color (like Munoz' "Disidentifications" or Delroy-Simms' "Greatest Taboo"), then you'll find Eng's book very worthwhile.

13 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Ultimately less satisfying than one would hope, October 22, 2004

By 

A reader (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Perverse Modernities) (Paperback)

Although in some ways provocative, this book poses a question it never adequately grapples with--namely, can the "materiality" of race be properly characterized or understood as a "discursive limit" to ideological constructions of ethnicity without being understood as existing outside of discourse? It seems to me that Eng fails to address the question of whether such constructions may be regarded as either a pre- or extra-discursive "hard kernel of the Real," one the one hand, or simply another aspect of discourse, on the other hand. His work would benefit from a more thorough engagement with, and analysis of, the "objet petit a" in the work of Zizek and Lacan. Perhaps "race" in general ought to be regarded a primordial psychic "hole," an "absence" or pure negativity where a "grounding" for discourse ought to be but proves to be lacking. Unfortunately that is a proposition that Eng hints at but does not explore.