Description
Book SynopsisJinah Kim explores Asian and Asian American texts from 1945 to the present that mourn the loss of those killed by U.S. empire building and militarism in the Pacific, showing how the refusal to heal from imperial violence may help generate a transformative antiracist and decolonial politics.
Trade Review"
Postcolonial Grief offers a promising glimpse into what it might look like to pursue comparative or relational area studies through an anticolonial orientation." -- Emily Mitchell-Eaton * Society & Space *
"
Postcolonial Grief powerfully uncovers overlapping histories of violence across the Pacific and carefully considers the relationship between grief, silencing, and reconciliation. Kim convincingly demonstrates the way that melancholia and loss constitute powerful forces in the Pacific as wounds that refuse to heal yet open up new (im)possibilities for relating to violence outside of liberal humanist frameworks of reconciliation.
Postcolonial Grief is thus invaluable for those interested in affect studies, settler colonial studies, cultural studies, communication, and Asian-American history." -- Corinne Mitsuye Sugino * Lateral *
“The book is a powerful exploration of how unmourned and unresolved deaths across the transpacific haunt the present, offering possibilities for political transformations. Analyzing the ghostly and capturing them into words is a challenging academic endeavor, which this book accomplishes robustly, making interventions across diasporic studies, critical race theories, feminist studies, cultural studies, and Asian American studies and Latinx studies.” -- Hayana Kim * Situations *
“In this provocative book, Jinah Kim explores the ways in which trans-Pacific victims of imperial colonial politics and militarism have navigated their relationships with decolonial politics since World War II, and the ensuing psychological transformations…. This is an important contribution, and should be read by not only students and scholars of literature and history, but also those from Asian American and East Asian studies, anthropology, sociology, and political science.” -- Nobuko Adachi * Pacific Affairs *
“
Postcolonial Grief covers new ground by providing a new understanding of the biopolitical regime of mourning in the Pacific and...by beautifully weaving transdisciplinary archives together to produce a richly documented and mind awakening volume.” -- Tian Li * Journal of Asian Studies *
“In this ambitious book, Jinah Kim challenges existing geographies and conceptual frameworks by highlighting what she calls the Pacific Arena as a critical imaginative geography.... Kim succeeds in exposing liberal nation-states’ silence about the violent past.” -- Jane Im * MELUS *
“Guided by comparative, relational, and critical juxtaposing perspectives,
Postcolonial Grief powerfully names the interimperial complicity between U.S. and Japanese imperialisms in the Pacific and places the experiences and representations of Korean and Japanese diasporas in the Americas in conversation with other displaced and marginalized peoples.” -- Yên Lê Espiritu * Journal of World History *
“In
Postcolonial Grief, Kim moves skillfully to the core of the affective economy underlying Asian American studies as a growing field of research and a site of justice and equality.... This is a bold, sympathetic, and well-informed book.” -- B. G. Chang * Choice *
“Kim’s deft textual analysis brings into high relief the depth and breadth of grief accompanying the deferment of decolonization in certain spaces and for certain communities....
Postcolonial Grief trenchantly and persuasively shows the failures of US liberalism abroad and at home.” -- Jeehyun Lim * American Literary History *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Introduction. Mourning Empire 1
1. Melancholy Violence: Frantz Fanon's
The Wretched of the Earth and Hisaye Yamamato's "A Fire in Fontana" 23
2. Haunting Absence: Racial Cognitive Mapping, Interregnum, and the Los Angeles Riots of 1992 41
3. Transpacific Noir, Dying Colonialism 66
4. Destined for Death: Antigone along the Pacific Rim 88
Epilogue. Watery Graves 110
Notes 115
Bibliography 153
Index 175
