Double Agency: Acts of Impersonation in Asian American Literature and CultureStanford University Press, 2005 - 245 pages In Double Agency, Tina Chen proposes impersonation as a paradigm for teasing out the performative dimensions of Asian American literature and culture. Asian American acts of impersonation, she argues, foreground the limits of subjectivity even as they insist on the undeniable importance of subjecthood. By decoupling imposture from impersonation, Chen shows how Asian American performances have often been misinterpreted, read as acts of betrayal rather than multiple allegiance. A central paradox informing the book—impersonation as a performance of divided allegiance that simultaneously pays homage to and challenges authenticity and authority—thus becomes a site for reconsidering the implications of Asian Americans as double agents. In exploring the possibilities that impersonation affords for refusing the binary logics of loyalty/disloyalty, real/fake, and Asian/American, Double Agency attends to the possibilities of reading such acts as "im-personations"—dynamic performances, and a performance dynamics—through which Asian Americans constitute themselves as speaking and acting subjects. |
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acts of impersonation agent Akiko Anna May Wong argues articulates Asian American identity Asian American literature authenticity Beccah becomes body Butterfly chapter character Chin Chin's Chinese American claim comfort woman constructed context conventions critical critique cultural daughter despite Detective Fiction discourse distinctions Double Agency embodied emphasis enacting ethnic experience Fah Lo Suee figure foregrounds Frank Chin Fu Manchu genre Henry Henry's Hwang iden identifies immigrants imposture Induk invisibility Japanese American Keller Korean American Korean shamanism linguistic mask mother Mulberry and Peach Mulberry's multiple narrative Native Speaker nature Nieh's novel performance Picture Bride play politics of impersonation pose possession possibilities practice problematic protagonist race racial reading relationship rendered representation resistance rituals Rohmer's role Sax Rohmer sexual Significantly sinbyong Sinocentric social spirits spy story stage stereotype stereotype's strategy suggests theatrical tion understanding Vincent women Wong writes Yellow Peril yellowface York