14 Defamiliarizing Asian American Studies

• Published in: Journal of Asian American studies 2022-06, Vol.25 (2), p.335-342
• Main Author: Chuh, Kandice
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Academic Language; Activism; Activists; American Studies; Asian American studies; Asian Americans; Classroom Communication; Community Relations; Educational Change; Higher education; Ideology; Inequality; Institutions; Keywords; Neoliberalism; Oppression; Political activism; Professionalization; Resource Materials; Social activism; Social change; Social movements; Teaching; Thinking Skills; Writing
• ISSN: 1097-2129; 1096-8598; 1096-8598
• DOI: 10.1353/jaas.2022.0027

There are indeed people whose political and community organizing doesn't begin or end in or remain within academic institutions, or whose intellectual work is generated from within but rather emerges from organizational or social movement work uninterested in the academy as a primary site of engagement. [...]the construct, it seems to me, is the aspirational ideal for many working in fields like Asian American studies, ones long defined by their sustained attention to and efforts to remedy inequality, injustice, and oppression of various kinds. Perhaps if we let go of the construct scholar-activist, which the redefinition and refunctioning of "scholar" toward the ends of social change motivates and indeed requires, the institutional location of Asian Americanist critique announces itself anew. [...]it seems to me that the construct scholar-activist implies that activism is not intellectual labor, that research and study and theorization and critical thinking are separable from the constellation of activities and motivations and horizons of possibility that underwrite activism. Much has been said of the demands of professionalization and the stresses and stressfulness of the metrics and management of the neoliberal university, including the role of diversity and excellence and their roles in buttressing rather than defunctioning the reproduction of social hierarchies.6 In this context, remaining nonaligned requires deliberate and collective refusal of the seductions of the institution. The distinction Stefano Harney and Fred Moten draw between the "critical academic" and the "subversive intellectual" helpfully identifies the difference between embracing and refusing the ideologies advanced by normative higher education.7 Studying and teaching are the activities of the subversive intellectual nonaligned with power, and the institution is understood to be a source of material resources that can be utilized toward such ends.