Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation: On the Social and Psychic Lives of Asian Americans

by David L. Eng

Overview

In Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation critic David L. Eng and psychotherapist Shinhee Han draw on case histories from the mid-1990s to the present to explore the social and psychic predicaments of Asian American young adults from Generation X to Generation Y. Combining critical race theory with several strands of psychoanalytic thought, they develop the concepts of racial melancholia and racial dissociation to investigate changing processes of loss associated with immigration, displacement, diaspora, and assimilation. These case studies of first- and second-generation Asian Americans deal with a range of difficulties, from depression, suicide, and the politics of coming out to broader issues of the model minority stereotype, transnational adoption, parachute children, colorblind discourses in the United States, and the rise of Asia under globalization. Throughout, Eng and Han link psychoanalysis to larger structural and historical phenomena, illuminating how the study of psychic processes of individuals can inform investigations of race, sexuality, and immigration while creating a more sustained conversation about the social lives of Asian Americans and Asians in the diaspora.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478001607
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	02/15/2019
Pages:	232
Sales rank:	615,411
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.49(d)

About the Author

David L. Eng is Richard L. Fisher Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania.

Shinhee Han is a psychotherapist at The New School and in private practice in New York City.

Table of Contents

Preface  vii
Introduction: The History of the (Racial) Subject and the Subject of (Racial) History  1
Part I: Racial Melancholia
1. Racial Melancholia: Model Minorities, Depression, and Suicide  33
2. Desegregating Love: Transnational Adoption, Racial Reparation, and Racial Transnational Objects  66
Part II. Racial Dissociation
3. Racial Dissociation: Parachute Children and Psychic Nowhere  101
4. (Gay) Panic Attack: Coming Out in a Colorblind Age  141
Epilogue  174
Notes  181
Bibliography  203
Index  213
 

What People are Saying About This

Mae Ngai

“A most illuminating and productive dialogue about the dark side of the model minority stereotype, where theory meets practice, the social meets the personal, and the material meets the psychic. David L. Eng and Shinhee Han have given us new ways to think about the problems facing Asian American students, including their disturbing rate of suicide on college campuses.”

Beyond Doer and Done To: Recognition Theory, Intersubjectivity and the Third - Jessica Benjamin

“David L. Eng and Shinhee Han's boldly ambitious and learned book accomplishes what few other authors have even attempted: the integration of critical racial and cultural theory with clinical psychoanalysis. Eng and Han challenge us to confront afresh the pervasive and painful consequences of the cumulative trauma bred in a racialized social order. Readers from both the clinical and academic worlds will welcome Eng and Han's stunning insights and powerful narratives.”

Immigrants Raising Citizens: Undocumented Parents and their Young Children - Hirokazu Yoshikawa

“Seamlessly and effectively integrating clinical case histories with psychoanalysis, critical race theory, and the tortured history of racial integration and segregation, this book offers a compelling analysis of race as relation, whiteness as property, and the history of Asian American social exclusion in the United States.”

Editorial Reviews

"Eng and Han's work provides a critical vocabulary for articulating the slippery and insidious ways multicultural violence operates in the contemporary era.... Eng and Han contribute an invaluable perspective on Asian Americans' racial and psychic processes that will be of interest to scholars across disciplines...."--Corinne Mitsuye Sugino "Journal of Asian American Studies" (6/1/2021 12:00:00 AM)

"Eng and Han--a literature professor and a psychotherapist, respectively--demonstrate how to understand the entanglements of history, culture, and psychoanalysis for Asian Americans. . . . This is an unusual social justice project, for it imagines a collective politics that is grounded in the intimate--and highly individualized--work of therapeutic repair."--Amy R. Wong "Public Books" (6/9/2020 12:00:00 AM)

"Accessibly written and powerfully argued, Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation is an excellent resource for any scholar thinking about race and psychoanalysis and, specifically, who are thinking critically about the use of psychoanalytic paradigms like mourning, loss, melancholia, infantile development, reparation, or transitional objects in relation to questions of the lived experiences of racial oppression."--Christopher Bennett "Journal of Critical Race Inquiry" (1/1/2020 12:00:00 AM)

"Intentionally answering the call for interdisciplinary scholarship, this innovative work will be valuable for clinicians as well as scholars of race. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals."--J. deGuzman "Choice" (8/1/2019 12:00:00 AM)

"One of the most striking aspects of Eng and Han's book is the relative ease with which it toggles back and forth between psychoanalytic case studies of people in various stages of suffering and characters in novels who were created to embody themes of beauty and triumph, suffering and fracture. . . . There's a power in being able to recognize our struggles as the result of paradoxes we live within rather than seeing them as purely private failings. It's a step toward imagining lives that we might be the authors of, with endings that we write ourselves."--Hua Hsu "The New Yorker" (7/17/2019 12:00:00 AM)

From the Publisher

"Eng and Han—a literature professor and a psychotherapist, respectively—demonstrate how to understand the entanglements of history, culture, and psychoanalysis for Asian Americans. . . . This is an unusual social justice project, for it imagines a collective politics that is grounded in the intimate—and highly individualized—work of therapeutic repair."

Public Books - Amy R. Wong

"Accessibly written and powerfully argued, Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation is an excellent resource for any scholar thinking about race and psychoanalysis and, specifically, who are thinking critically about the use of psychoanalytic paradigms like mourning, loss, melancholia, infantile development, reparation, or transitional objects in relation to questions of the lived experiences of racial oppression."

Journal of Critical Race Inquiry - Christopher Bennett

"Intentionally answering the call for interdisciplinary scholarship, this innovative work will be valuable for clinicians as well as scholars of race. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals."

Choice - J. deGuzman

"One of the most striking aspects of Eng and Han’s book is the relative ease with which it toggles back and forth between psychoanalytic case studies of people in various stages of suffering and characters in novels who were created to embody themes of beauty and triumph, suffering and fracture. . . . There’s a power in being able to recognize our struggles as the result of paradoxes we live within rather than seeing them as purely private failings. It’s a step toward imagining lives that we might be the authors of, with endings that we write ourselves."

The New Yorker - Hua Hsu

Eng and Han’s work provides a critical vocabulary for articulating the slippery and insidious ways multicultural violence operates in the contemporary era.... Eng and Han contribute an invaluable perspective on Asian Americans’ racial and psychic processes that will be of interest to scholars across disciplines....

Journal of Asian American Studies - Corinne Mitsuye Sugino