Inauthentic: The Anxiety over Culture and Identity

220 Pages·2004·0.64 MB·English

by  Vincent J. Cheng

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Inauthentic
T A C
HE NXIETY OVER ULTURE
I
AND DENTITY
(cid:1)
VINCENT J. CHENG
Rutgers University Press
New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cheng, Vincent John, 1951–
Inauthentic : the anxiety over culture and identity / Vincent J. Cheng
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0–8135–3400–3 (hardcover : alk. paper)—ISBN 0–8135–3401–1
(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Ethnicity—United States. 2. Group Identity—United States. 3. Authenticity
(Philosophy) 4. Minorities—United States—Psychology. 5. Racially mixed people—
United States—Psychology. 6. Biculturalism—United States. 7. United States—Ethnic
relations. 8. United States—Race relations. I. Title.
E184.A1C4457 2004
305.8' 00973—dc22
2003018874
A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British
Library.
Aversion of chapter 2 was first published as “Of Canons, Colonies, and Critics: The
Ethics and Politics of Postcolonial Joyce Studies” in Cultural Critique 35 (winter 1996–
1997) and is reprinted by permission of University of Minnesota Press. Portions of
chapter 3 were first published as “Authenticity and Identity: Catching the Irish Spirit” in
Semicolonial Joyce, edited by Derek Attridge and Marjorie Howes (Cambridge
University Press, 2000), and as “‘Terrible Queer Creatures’: Joyce, Cosmopolitanism,
and the Inauthentic Irishman” in James Joyce and the Fabrication of an Irish Identity,
edited by Michael Patrick Gillespie (European Joyce Studies 11, Editions Rodopi, 2001);
reprinted by permission.
Copyright © 2004 by Vincent J. Cheng
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 100
Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854–8099. The only exception to this prohibi-
tion is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law.
Manufactured in the United States of America
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
1 Introduction: The Anxiety of Identity 1
2 Who Can Speak as Other? Authenticity,
Postcoloniality, and the Academy 9
3 Inventing Irishness: Authenticity and Identity 28
4 International Adoption and Identity: The Anxiety
over Authentic Cultural Heritage 62
5 The Inauthentic Jew: Jewishness
and Its Discontents 84
6 Asian American Identity: The Good, the Bad,
the Ugly—and the Future 125
7 Coda: Living Cultures 171
Notes 183
Bibliography 191
Index 201
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like, first of all, to thank all the friends and colleagues who read
various chapter drafts-in-progress and whose thoughtful insights and sugges-
tions were immensely helpful. These include Richard Yarborough, Abdul
JanMohamed, Derek Attridge, Marjorie Howes, Teresa McKenna, Tania
Modleski, Robert Newman, Ben Shreiber, David Schulman, Dan Greenwood,
Viet Nguyen, Crystal Parikh—and, most especially, Maeera Shreiber, Rachel
Adler, Margot Norris, and King-Kok Cheung.
I am grateful to the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah
for giving me the fellowship that allowed me to complete this book.
At Rutgers University Press, Leslie Mitchner has been wonderful and
supportive; I also thank Pamela Fischer, Alison Hack, and Molly Baab for
their excellent work.
I want to thank Ciming Mei for taking the Hanukkah menorah which
my wife’s mother had given us on the occasion of our adopted Taiwanese
baby boy’s conversion to Judaism—a menorah made out of mahjong tiles!—
and turning it into a marvelously appropriate book-cover design, with red-
white-and-blue candles and thoroughly inauthentic lettering in a font called
Wonton (used in Chinese restaurants).
Finally, this is a book that deals with topics and issues that both infuse
and arise from my own life, my personal experiences. I wish especially to
thank those who have shared that personal life most closely—and who have
thus influenced and shaped my evolving understandings of both a personal
identity and a collective, evolving authenticity: my mother and my late fa-
ther, my sisters, Teresa and Chiquita, and especially my wife, Maeera, and
my son, Gabi. What I am I owe to you.
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