Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T17:46:49.590Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Toward Asian Argentine Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Chisu Teresa Ko*
Affiliation:
Ursinus College
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Asians in Argentina have received little scholarly attention despite the current proliferation of studies on Asians in Latin America. Asian Argentines' absence from academic research reflects, in part, their marginality and presumed foreignness in Argentina's past and current national narratives. Existing scholarship frames Asian descendants predominantly as members of single-ethnic colectividades (communities) illustrating ties to co-ethnics and country of origin. To broaden this perspective, I examine the possibilities of a panethnic and domestic “Asian Argentine” approach. Conceptualizing an Asian Argentine category can be problematized by ongoing theoretical discussions regarding the limitations of multiculturalism and nation-based inquiries. Situating these critiques in Argentina's particular context—from its historical insistence on whiteness to its newly ethnicized political arena today—I argue that an Asian Argentine approach can be a useful analytical and political tool to understand this group's position in Argentina and serve as a starting point to challenge the discourses that marginalize Asian Argentines as nonexistent or irreversibly foreign.

Resumen

Resumen

A pesar de la actual proliferación de estudios sobre los asiáticos en América Latina, pocos estudios han prestado atención a la población asiática en Argentina. Esta ausencia refleja, en cierto modo, la posición marginal y presunta condición de extranjeros de los asiáticos en las narrativas nacionales argentinas de la actualidad y del pasado. Las investigaciones hasta ahora producidas suelen aproximarse a este grupo como miembros de “colectividades” étnicas destacando sobre todo el desarrollo de lazos étnicos y con el país de origen. Con el fin de ampliar esta perspectiva, este artículo explora la posibilidad de una aproximación “asiático-argentina,” con un enfoque a la vez pan-étnico y doméstico. Conceptualizar una categoría “asiático-argentina” se problematiza por los debates actuales sobre las limitaciones del multiculturalismo y las investigaciones estrictamente nacionales. Situando estos debates críticos dentro del contexto particular de la Argentina —desde su histórica insistencia sobre la blancura nacional y la etnicización del espacio político hoy en día—, este trabajo propone que una perspectiva asiático-argentina puede servir como una estrategia analítica y política para entender la posición de este grupo, y como punto de partida para refutar los discursos que marginalizan a los argentinos de ascendencia asiática como inexistentes o como irreversiblemente extranjeros.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 by the Latin American Studies Association

References

Adamovsky, Ezequiel 2012El color de la nación argentina: Conflictos y negociaciones por la definición de un ethnos nacional, de la crisis al Bicentenario.” Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas 49:343364.Google Scholar
Borensztein, Sebastián 2011 Un cuento chino. Pampa Films, DVD.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre 1991 Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre, and Wacquant, Loïc 1999On the Cunning of Imperialist Reason.” Theory, Culture and Society 16 (1): 4158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brubaker, Rogers 2009Ethnicity, Race, and Nationalism.” Annual Review of Sociology 35 (1): 2142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chang, Gordon H. 2010Eternally Foreign: Asian Americans, History, and Race.” In Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century, edited by Moya, Paula M. L. and Markus, Hazel Rose, 216233. New York: W. W. Norton and Company.Google Scholar
Chen, Verónica 2013 Mujer Conejo. Bambú Cine, DVD.Google Scholar
Delfino, Emilia, and Martín, Mariano 2012 El hombre del camión: Hugo Moyano; La historia secreta del sindicalista más poderoso de la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana. Kindle edition.Google Scholar
Forn, Juan 2007 María Domecq. Buenos Aires: Emecé.Google Scholar
Frigerio, Alejandro, and Lamborghini, Eva 2010Quebrando la invisibilidad: Identificaciones colectivas y creación de un movimiento social afrodescendiente en Argentina.” El Otro Derecho 41:139166.Google Scholar
Frigerio, Alejandro, and Lamborghini, Eva 2011(De)mostrando cultura: Estrategias políticas y culturales de visibilización y reivindicación en el movimiento afroargentino.” Boletín Americanista 63 (2): 101120.Google Scholar
Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires 2015 “Observatorio de colectividades.” Buenos Aires Ciudad. http://www.buenosaires.gob.ar/derechoshumanos/observatorio (accessed June 19, 2015).Google Scholar
Gómez, Silvina 2011La colectividad japonesa en Argentina: entre la invisibilidad y el Obelisco.” Paper presented at the X Congreso Argentino de Antropología Social, Buenos Aires, Argentina, November 2011.Google Scholar
Gómez, Silvina 2013Redes de asociaciones y umbrales en la construcción identitaria en la comunidad japonesa de Argentina.” REDES Revista Hispana para el Análisis de Redes Sociales 24 (2): 156187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordillo, Gastón 2016The Savage outside of White Argentina.” In Rethinking Race in Modern Argentina, edited by Alberto, Paulina L. and Elena, Eduardo, 241267. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grimson, Alejandro 2006Nuevas xenofobias, nuevas políticas étnicas en la Argentina.” In Migraciones regionales hacia la Argentina: Diferencia, desigualdad y derechos, edited by Grimson, Alejandro and Jelin, Elizabeth, 6997. Buenos Aires: Prometeo.Google Scholar
Hagimoto, Koichi 2014Beyond the Hyphen: Representation of Multicultural Japanese Identity in Maximiliano Matayoshi's Gaijin and Anna Kazumi Stahl's Flores de un solo día.Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World 3 (2). http://escholarship.org/uc/item/0sj2j5gx.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Higa, Marcelo 1995Desarrollo histórico de la inmigración japonesa en la Argentina hasta la Segunda Guerra Mundial.” Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos 10 (30): 471512.Google Scholar
Higa, Marcelo 2002The Emigration of Argentines of Japanese Descent to Japan.” In New Worlds, New Lives: Globalization and People of Japanese Descent in the Americas and from Latin America in Japan, edited by Hirabayashi, Lane Ryo, Kikumura-Yano, Akemi, and Hirabayashi, James A., 261278. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Hu-DeHart, Evelyn 2000Introduction: Asian American Formations in the Age of Globalization.” In Across the Pacific: Asian Americans and Globalization, 116. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Hu-DeHart, Evelyn 2009Multiculturalism in Latin American Studies: Locating the ‘Asian’ Immigrant; Or, Where Are the Chinos and Turcos?Latin American Research Review 44 (2): 235242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ishida, Chie 2015La colectividad and the Japanese Disappeared People under the Regime of the Military Junta in Argentina.” Contact Zone 7:5682.Google Scholar
Kazumi Stahl, Anna 2002 Flores de un solo día. Buenos Aires: Seix Barral.Google Scholar
Kibria, Nazli 1998The Contested Meanings of ‘Asian American’: Racial Dilemmas in the Contemporary US.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 21 (5): 939958.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Junyoung Verónica 2015Which Asia? Which Latin America? The Politics of Location in Asian-Latin American Studies.” Paper presented at the international congress of the Latin American Studies Association, San Juan, Puerto Rico, May 28.Google Scholar
Ko, Chisu Teresa 2014From Whiteness to Diversity: Crossing the Racial Threshold in Bicentennial Argentina.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 37 (14): 25292546.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ko, Chisu Teresa 2015 ‘“Argentina te incluye’: Asians in Argentina's Multicultural Novels.” Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures 69 (1): 113.Google Scholar
Ko, Chisu Teresa 2016Between Foreigners and Heroes: Asian-Argentines in a Newly Multicultural Nation.” In Rethinking Race in Modern Argentina, edited by Alberto, Paulina L. and Elena, Eduardo, 268288. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laufer, Rubén 2013Argentina-China: New Courses for an Old Dependency.” Latin American Policy 4 (1): 123143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laumonier, Isabel Jacqueline 2004Cafés, tintorerías y tango.” In Cuando Oriente llegó a América: Contribuciones de inmigrantes chinos, japoneses y coreanos, 161178. Washington, DC: Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo.Google Scholar
Lee, Erika 2005Orientalisms in the Americas: A Hemispheric Approach to Asian American History.” Journal of Asian American Studies 8 (3): 235256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Le Espíritu, Yen 2008 “Asian American Panethnicity: Challenges and Possibilities.” In The State of Asian America: Trajectory of Civil and Political Engagement, A Public Policy Report, edited by Paul M. Ong, 5:119136. Los Angeles: LEAP Asian Pacific American Public Policy Institute.Google Scholar
Lesser, Jeffrey 2007 A Discontented Diaspora: Japanese Brazilians and the Meanings of Ethnic Militancy, 1960–1980. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Lopez, David, and Espíritu, Yen 1990Panethnicity in the United States: A Theoretical Framework.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 13 (2): 198224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loveman, Mara 2014 National Colors: Racial Classification and the State in Latin America. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowe, Lisa 2000Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Marking Asian American Differences.” In Asian American Studies: A Reader, edited by Wu, Jean Yu-wen Shen and Song, Min, 423442. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Magnus, Ariel 2007 Un chino en bicicleta. Bogotá: Grupo Editorial Norma.Google Scholar
Matayoshi, Maximiliano 2002 Gaijin. Mexico City: Alfaguara.Google Scholar
Mera, Carolina 2006La diáspora coreana en América Latina.” Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de Buenos Aires.Google Scholar
Mera, Carolina 2007La inmigración coreana en Buenos Aires: Historia y actualidad.” In Memoria Electrónica del XI Congreso Internacional de ALADAA. Mexico City: Secretaría General de ALADAA.Google Scholar
Novick, Susana 2008Migración y políticas en Argentina: Tres leyes para un país extenso (1876–2004).” In Las migraciones en América Latina: Políticas, culturas y estrategias, edited by Novick, Susana, 131151. Buenos Aires: Catálogos.Google Scholar
Okamoto, Dina G. 2003Toward a Theory of Panethnicity: Explaining Asian American Collective Action.” American Sociological Review 68 (6): 811.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Onaha, Cecilia 2011 “Historia de la migración japonesa en Argentina: Diasporización y transnacionalismo.” Revista de Historia (12): 8296.Google Scholar
Osnos, Evan 2015 “Cristina Kirchner's Twitter Misadventure in China.” New Yorker, February 6. http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/cristina-kirchner-misadventure-china.Google Scholar
Page, Joanna 2009 Introduction to Crisis and Capitalism in Contemporary Argentine Cinema, 18. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Parreñas, Rhacel S., and Siu, Lok C. D. 2007Introduction: Asian Diasporas—New Conceptions, New Frameworks.” In Asian Diasporas: New Formations, New Conceptions, edited by Parreñas, Rhacel S. and Siu, Lok C. D., 127. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paz, Gonzalo 2014Argentina and Asia: China's Reemergence, Argentina's Recovery.” In Reaching cross the Pacific: Latin America and Asian in the New Century, edited by Arnson, Cynthia, Heine, Jorge, and Zaino, Christine, 153186. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/Reaching_Across_the_Pacific_2014_WWC.pdf.Google Scholar
Scanarotti, María Noel 2012 “El ”Chino“ de Graduados, una revelación impensanda.” Clarín, October 25. http://www.clarin.com/extrashow/tv/Chang-Sung-Kim-Walter-Graduados_0_798520321.html.Google Scholar
Scheuer, Gaspar 2012 Samurai. Tarea Fina, DVD.Google Scholar
Trejos, Bernardo, and Chiang, Lan-Hung Nora 2012Young Taiwanese Immigration to Argentina: The Challenges of Adaptation, Self Identity and Returning.” IJAPS: International Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies 8 (2): 113143.Google Scholar
Tsuda, Takeyuki 2014Tm American, Not Japanese!': The Struggle for Racial Citizenship among Later-Generation Japanese Americans.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 37 (3): 405424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wong, Sau-Ling C 1995Denationalization Reconsidered: Asian American Cultural Criticism at a Theoretical Crossroads.” Amerasia Journal 21:127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar