Transformation and Agency in Asian American Cultural Studies

Difference-be it in the form of identity or in claiming a group status or culture-is constituted by an exclusion; yet our question is how to mobilize this difference most effectively. Because the use of difference is often foundational instead of descriptive, the introduction and instantiation of difference in analysis is fraught with peril, and we should be attuned to how both difference and identity are mobilized, especially in terms of critiques meant to counter racial exclusion in the first place.1 Kent Ono (1995) perceptively points out that Asian American studies need to be (re)evaluated in terms of what they purport to represent: The very idea of Asian American, as a collective assignation, is a problematic issue.\n Since identity is based on exclusion-for Asian Americans, exclusion from citizen-subject status and the concomitant exclusion through cultural difference-the future(s) of Asian American studies cannot be based on such a concept.