Description
Book SynopsisIn Double Agency, Tina Chen proposes impersonation as a paradigm for teasing out the performative dimensions of Asian American literature and culture. Asian American acts of impersonation, she argues, foreground the limits of subjectivity even as they insist on the undeniable importance of subjecthood.
By decoupling imposture from impersonation, Chen shows how Asian American performances have often been misinterpreted, read as acts of betrayal rather than multiple allegiance. A central paradox informing the bookimpersonation as a performance of divided allegiance that simultaneously pays homage to and challenges authenticity and authoritythus becomes a site for reconsidering the implications of Asian Americans as double agents. In exploring the possibilities that impersonation affords for refusing the binary logics of loyalty/disloyalty, real/fake, and Asian/American, Double Agency attends to the possibilities of reading such acts as im-personationsdynamic perfo
Trade Review
"...Chen provides an intelligent, well-organized study that will be immediately useful in the field. With this book, the field of Asian American studies comes of age."--CHOICE
"...the sophistication with which Chen develops her critical framework and the deftness of her close readings make Double Agency an insightful and influential addition to the field of Asian American literary and cultural studies." -- Journal of Asian American Studies
Table of Contents
CONTENTS Acknowledgments Preface: On Impersonation and the Nature of the Not-so-secret Agent PART I: IMPERSONATION AND STEREOTYPE Chapter One: Impersonation and Double Agency--Theorizing the Practice, Practicing the Theory Chapter Two: Dissecting the "Devil Doctor": Stereotype and Sensationalism in Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu Chapter Three: De/Posing Stereotype on the Asian American Stage PART II: DOUBLE AGENTS, DOUBLE AGENCY Chapter Four: Bodily Negotiations: The Politics of Performance in Hualing Nieh's Mulberry and Peach Chapter Five: Shamanism and the Subject(s) of History in Nora Okja Keller's Comfort Woman Chapter Six: Impersonation and Other Disappearing Acts: the Double(d) Agent of Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker Coda Works Cited Index
