Conservatisms and Fascisms in Asian America
Guest Editors: Adrian De Leon (University of Southern California) and Jane Hong (Occidental College)
Publication Date: Planned for Spring 2022
Submission Requirements: 5,000-6,000 words (not including endnotes), due July 15, 2021
The field of Asian American studies grew out of the revolutionary and anti-war projects of the Third World Liberation Front and Asian American Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. But even as Movement activists marched and demonstrated for ethnic studies as a liberatory project of self-determination and solidarity among communities of color, other Asian American figures like S.I. Hayakawa, a Japanese Canadian academic and administrator, moved to crush them. Since the 1970s, Asian communities in the United States have become integrated into mainstream national politics as a growing electorate. However, these communities are politically diverse, if not fractured; as recently as the 2020 election, Donald Trump made major gains among Asian American voters, even in the wake of his vitriolic rhetoric and racist policies during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Today, from movements in Asia to their counterparts in North America, we often imagine transnational Asian political organizing to be progressive spaces, particularly those which respond to various oppressive regimes around the world. However, what might seem to be liberatory movements in one geopolitical context might actually align with oppressive or authoritarian regimes in other spaces. This is particularly true of nationalist movements in Hong Kong, which have, in several cases, periodically aligned with Trumpism in the U.S. It is also true of diasporic communities and organizations who support (and vote for) fascist regimes in the “homeland.”
How does the transnationality of Asian diasporic communities, and the infrastructures that sustain both crossings and settlements (including settler colonialisms), condition the emergence of right-wing politics? How can a politics of accountability, especially that of the fraught histories of our “own” communities, lead to a more reparative politics of solidarity? How can our study of the past help us negotiate the cleavages that continue to divide Asian American communities today? How can deeper engagements with non-progressive politics in transnational Asian communities, both historical and contemporary, help us forge a radical liberatory politics in today’s moment of violent anti-Asian racist misogyny?
We invite submissions to think through these queries, both in historical and contemporary contexts, including studies of right-wing movements and radical responses against them within Asian diasporic communities. We particularly welcome essays that consider the following themes:
• The limits of liberalism, inclusion, and the model minority myth
• Asian American alignments with white Christian nationalism and the Republican Party
• Anti-Blackness and settler colonialism in Asian diasporic communities
• Global authoritarianism, fascism, and nationalism
• Religion and transnational right-wing political culture
• Finance capital, class mobility, and aspirational whiteness
• Conservative politics within popular culture, media infrastructures, and social media
• Radical and activist interventions into Asian American conservative spaces
• Misogyny, white supremacy, and Asian American politics
• Militarism, paramilitaries, and Asian American participation in white supremacist movements
• The long legacies and afterlives of U.S. empire building and Cold War projects
Submission Guidelines and Review Process
Please submit your paper at: https://www.editorialmanager.com/ramj/default.aspx. There, you can find author instructions for uploading your submission, which requires a user account.
The guest editors, in consultation with the Amerasia Journal editorial staff and peer reviewers, make decisions on the final essays:
• Initial review of submitted papers by guest editors and Amerasia Journal editorial staff
• Papers approved by editors will undergo blind peer review
• Revision of accepted peer-reviewed papers and final submission
Please contact Arnold Pan with any questions regarding your submission: arnoldpan@ucla.edu.
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