Colonial Interruptions: (Re)mergences, Remains, and Redress in Southeast Asian American Diasporic Politics

Session Submission Type: Paper Session: Traditional Format

Abstract

The wars and broader colonial interruptions/interventions in Southeast Asia have undoubtedly shaped the region and its peoples all over the diaspora. Southeast Asian American Studies have explored what it means to have been subjects involved in colonial struggles, and what emerges out of, and remains in, this contact many decades later. Specifically, our panel explores the colonial waste left behind by colonial tourism, warfare, and interruptions within the everyday lives of Southeast Asians and its diasporic subjects. We ask, how does fiction, poetry, and film interrogate such legacies? What are the politics that emerges for Southeast Asian Americans in colonial aftermaths? How do Southeast Asian American lived experiences and its cultural productions speak towards a form of ethical redress that illuminates the colonial ruinations? In another crucial maneuver, our panel links the colonial legacies of Western interruption in Southeast Asia to other sites and subjects that otherwise have not been traditionally brought into conversation with Southeast Asian American Studies. Examining the intimacies between Southeast Asian American, African American, and Hawaiian subjects, our panel explicates past and present conditions of colonialisms that affect Southeast Asian Americans and their closely racialized others. Our panel intimately weaves the notion of "emergence" as a way to bring new life/light to colonial legacies as endured and understood by Southeast Asian Americans.

Sub Unit

• American Studies Association Annual Meeting

Chair

• Mariam B Lam, University of California-Riverside

Individual Presentations

• Emergences in Afterland: Exploring Hmong American Political Poetry - Kong Pha, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire

• Pussy, Paradise, and Elephants: Reading the Specter of Western Tourism and Leisure through Thai and Hawaiian Literature - Pahole Sookkasikon, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

• Walking with the Ghost: Occupying the Present in the Afterlife of War in Southeast Asia - Lina Chhun, Stanford University

Comment

• Mariam B Lam, University of California-Riverside