International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS)

In THE FEELING OF KINSHIP David Eng explores the material and psychic impacts of Asian transnational and queer social movements on notions of family and kinship in the contemporary US. Arguing that the current cultural moment is defined by the dissociation of queer politics from critical race politics, Eng highlights the ways that “queer liberalism” – queer politics that focuses narrowly on gay/lesbian identity and liberal political norms of inclusion rather than on broad critiques of a range of social exclusions –  tends to erase the rhetoric of racial difference from our cultural and critical vocabulary. This volume seeks to recreate that rhetoric, providing an account of the ways that ongoing problems of race and racism are negotiated within the private space of family and kinship relations. Focusing on the queer Asian diaspora, Eng articulates a notion of kinship and diaspora that emphasizes queerness, affiliation, and social contingency rather than ethnic descent, filiation, and biological traceability. Within the context of this reimagined diaspora, Eng examines the psychic dimensions of Asian transnational migration and family, exploring feelings of kinship and belonging that fall outside of traditional structures and laying the foundations for renewed discussion of the ways that racial and sexual identity are articulated in relation to the state, the family, and each other.

The volume begins with an analysis of the landmark 2003 US Supreme Court ruling Lawrence v Texas in relation to the emergence of queer liberalism. Eng considers the way that mainstream gay and lesbian activists liken Lawrence to Loving v Virginia, a landmark 1967 US Supreme Court decision that struck down as unconstitutional a Virginia statue that prohibited marriage between whites and blacks. Eng argues that this analogy configures racism as a problem of the past and highlights the way that the rise of queer liberalism depends upon the active repression of race. Eng then moves to consider the queer Asian diaspora through a number of contemporary texts. In a chapter devoted to an exploration of the figure of the transnational adoptee, Eng explores the history of postwar transnational adoption from Asia through an analysis of Deann Borshay-Liem’s 2000 documentary First Person Plural. He situates the practice of transnational adoption firmly within gendered histories of military violence and also explores the psychic consequences of the transfer of infants as they seek to make sense of their multiple mothers and fathers. Another chapter considers the problem of collective political racial reparation through an analysis of a growing body of US cultural productions about Japanese internment produced by third-generation artists. Eng traces the ways that their works collectively insist that political reparation and psychic reparation do not necessarily coincide.