Imaging 'Alien' Rapa Nui/Easter Island: Rethinking the Identity Politics of Asian Chileans

• In Event: Re-Tracing the Transpacific Roots and Experiences of East Asian Migrants in Latin America

Abstract

This presentation examines representations of Rapa Nui/Easter Island, through Korean Anglo-hegemonic messianic images in the music video “Moai” (2009) by one of Korea’s most influential rock and pop stars, Seo Tai Ji (1972). “Moai” was filmed in Rapa Nui, where the enigmatic Moai statues reside and are central to Seo Tai Ji’s song and music video. The video reveals two racialized views of Latin America (and Polynesia) filtered through the images of Korean Anglo-hegemonic lenses: (1) mystic orientalism and (2) ideological subalternity. I argue that South Korean “neo-hegemony” heavily inherits from Western hegemony, and mostly conceits of discourses of messianic neoliberalism and Anglo-hegemonic exceptionalisms, including itself (South Korea as part of the Anglo-hegemon). This discourse leads to the erasure of Asian Chileans, and the inability of reformulating Rapa Nui as Asian/Polinesian.

Author

• Moisés Park, Baylor University