Saturday, February 22, 2020

Week 8_Miguel Flores_ASA114


The readings this week underlines the theme of the intersectionality of identities through the process of transnationalism K. Scott Wong emphasized these interconnections by informing his readers about the importance of transnationalism and how that is creating and forming new hybrid cultures, ideologies, traditions, beliefs, and practices. Wong mentioned in his piece the significant impact of migrations and how that created a large-scale network of people that became exposed to the different cultures and ways of thinking. In these exchanges and processes, the economic flow was heavily impacted and it developed an influx of demand in human resources, labor forces, and mass migrations. All of these entailed more globalized and centralized connections of all nations that are at play. Bernard Scott Lucious, on the other hand, discussed “Black Pacific” by reiterating the impacts of transnationalism by exploring personal narratives of Afro-Amerasians who dealt with racial discrimination within their diasporic communities. Accounts that were focused on the story of otherness and belongingness captures the main sentiments of a society that has been conditioned to think in terms of whiteness and to be “one of them.” It uncovers a reality that is far beyond the usual take on racial discourse. Individuals highlighted in the readings are offspring of mixed parents, their mixed races label them as impure and foreigner – this puts them in a situation where they are basically disowned by their own family and their own respective communities.

            From the reading above, it ties in the main context of the course regarding Asian Diaspora. These connections from the homeland through the facilitation of transnationalism and globalization, it complicates our understanding about the new communities, cultures, traditions, practices, and beliefs. It also deepens our knowledge of different diaspora and their mobilization into various political and social spaces. Wong and Lucious emphasize the entanglements of networks and how that is formulating new pieces of knowledge on transnationalism. As a person who migrated from the Philippines and witnessing firsthand the effects of being alienated and at the same having the freedom to develop your own ideologies essentializes transnationalism as a factor in negotiating personal and cultural identities. A line of queries that would be interesting to unpack are instances where transnationalism and making connections have failed to dissatisfy the nations and its people? Are there even any instances where transnationalism was simply a ploy or an excuse to mobilize people for exploitative labor?



References:

"Amerasians" YouTube. uploaded by 451videoletteratura, 29 May 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IKoF6VpsQo

Bernard Scott Lucious. “Into the Black Pacific: Testimonies of Vietnamese Afro-Amerasian Displacements.” Displacements

K. Scott Wong. “Diasporas, Displacements, and the Construction of Transnational Identities.” Displacements.

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