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Chapter 14 - Transpacific Noir

from Part III - Readings in Genre, Gender, and Genealogies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2023

Angela Naimou
Affiliation:
Clemson University, South Carolina
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Summary

This chapter addresses how transpacific influences shaping the genre of noir have been made into secrets. Surveying US classical film and literary noir, including Double Indemnity (1944) and The Lady from Shanghai (1947), it challenges the scholarly consensus representing noir as a cultural and intellectual collaboration between Europe and the United States. The chapter argues that eliding the history of transpacific exchanges that helped give birth to noir is itself a byproduct of US military expansion in the Asia-Pacific, a history of violence made into the verboten and unrecognizable with the aid of US popular culture. The chapter then engages with Filipino American author Carlos Bulosan’s posthumously published novel All the Conspirators, arguably the first Asian American noir novel. Written in secret to evade FBI surveillance, Bulosan’s novel went undiscovered and unpublished until the 1980s. Set in the Philippines immediately after the end of World War II, it thematizes the failures of War Crimes Tribunals to adjudicate true justice and subverts the expectations of noir to reveal hidden anticolonial solidarities, challenging US military imperialism across the Asia-Pacific.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Transpacific Noir
  • Edited by Angela Naimou, Clemson University, South Carolina
  • Book: Diaspora and Literary Studies
  • Online publication: 20 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108887946.018
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  • Transpacific Noir
  • Edited by Angela Naimou, Clemson University, South Carolina
  • Book: Diaspora and Literary Studies
  • Online publication: 20 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108887946.018
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Transpacific Noir
  • Edited by Angela Naimou, Clemson University, South Carolina
  • Book: Diaspora and Literary Studies
  • Online publication: 20 July 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108887946.018
Available formats
×