Description
Book SynopsisIn Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation critic David L. Eng and psychotherapist Shinhee Han draw on case histories from the mid-1990s to the present to explore the social and psychic predicaments of Asian American young adults from Generation X to Generation Y. Combining critical race theory with several strands of psychoanalytic thought, they develop the concepts of racial melancholia and racial dissociation to investigate changing processes of loss associated with immigration, displacement, diaspora, and assimilation. These case studies of first- and second-generation Asian Americans deal with a range of difficulties, from depression, suicide, and the politics of coming out to broader issues of the model minority stereotype, transnational adoption, parachute children, colorblind discourses in the United States, and the rise of Asia under globalization. Throughout, Eng and Han link psychoanalysis to larger structural and historical phenomena, illuminating how the study of psychic processes of individuals can inform investigations of race, sexuality, and immigration while creating a more sustained conversation about the social lives of Asian Americans and Asians in the diaspora.
Trade Review"Intentionally answering the call for interdisciplinary scholarship, this innovative work will be valuable for clinicians as well as scholars of race. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals." -- J. deGuzman * Choice *
"One of the most striking aspects of Eng and Han’s book is the relative ease with which it toggles back and forth between psychoanalytic case studies of people in various stages of suffering and characters in novels who were created to embody themes of beauty and triumph, suffering and fracture. . . . There’s a power in being able to recognize our struggles as the result of paradoxes we live within rather than seeing them as purely private failings. It’s a step toward imagining lives that we might be the authors of, with endings that we write ourselves." -- Hua Hsu * The New Yorker *
"Accessibly written and powerfully argued,
Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation is an excellent resource for any scholar thinking about race and psychoanalysis and, specifically, who are thinking critically about the use of psychoanalytic paradigms like mourning, loss, melancholia, infantile development, reparation, or transitional objects in relation to questions of the lived experiences of racial oppression." -- Christopher Bennett * Journal of Critical Race Inquiry *
"Eng and Han—a literature professor and a psychotherapist, respectively—demonstrate how to understand the entanglements of history, culture, and psychoanalysis for Asian Americans. . . . This is an unusual social justice project, for it imagines a collective politics that is grounded in the intimate—and highly individualized—work of therapeutic repair." -- Amy R. Wong * Public Books *
“Eng and Han’s work provides a critical vocabulary for articulating the slippery and insidious ways multicultural violence operates in the contemporary era.... Eng and Han contribute an invaluable perspective on Asian Americans’ racial and psychic processes that will be of interest to scholars across disciplines....” -- Corinne Mitsuye Sugino * Journal of Asian American Studies *
Table of ContentsPreface vii
Introduction: The History of the (Racial) Subject and the Subject of (Racial) History 1
Part I: Racial Melancholia
1. Racial Melancholia: Model Minorities, Depression, and Suicide 33
2. Desegregating Love: Transnational Adoption, Racial Reparation, and Racial Transnational Objects 66
Part II. Racial Dissociation
3. Racial Dissociation: Parachute Children and Psychic Nowhere 101
4. (Gay) Panic Attack: Coming Out in a Colorblind Age 141
Epilogue 174
Notes 181
Bibliography 203
Index 213
