De-Privileging Positions: Indian Americans, South Asian Americans, and the Politics of Asian American Studies (original) (raw)

2000, Journal of Asian American Studies

among others, have done research on South Asians in the U. S. for more than a decade, and some have noted the paucity of scholarly research on this group. Rumblings of discontent with the agenda of AAS are nothing new. Yet, with the controversy regarding Pilipino Americans and Blu's Hanging at the 1998 AAAS convention, and the consequent formation and meetings of the East of California "Pilot Project on Marginalization and Internal Racism within Asian American Studies" the same year, 3 the organization has become even more consciously self-critical and begun to give greater attention to groups hitherto neglected from the AAS curriculum. Not surprisingly, then, the 1999 national convention included the largest number of panels ever on, about, and/or organized by South Asian Americans. 4 There were at least three roundtable discussions on the "marginalization" of South Asian Americans, where all the authors of this essay were either chairs or participants. One invited keynote speaker was the most renowned South Asian academic in the U. S.-Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak-the postcolonial critic who, before this event, had neither identified herself nor been identified with AAS, and whose position in a sense signifies the contested relationship between South Asians' postcoloniality and Asian American-ness. 5 Stephen Sumida's presidential DE-PRIVILEGING POSITIONS • DAVÉ • 69 address encouraged Asian Americanists to learn from South Asian American scholars. Although there has been inconsistent inclusion of South Asian American panels in the last decade, the recent convention seemed to be a turning point. Thus, the authors of this essay feel optimistic about the new directions that both the field and the Association are taking to become aware of South Asian American issues in the new millennium. This change is partly attributable to the demographics of the rapidly increasing South Asian American college-bound populations, as well as to South Asian Americans' having become the third largest Asian American group. The transformation of the post-1965 immigrants from "middleman minorities" and "'future-oriented' sojourners" 6 to becoming settled as Americans also contributes to their (self-)acknowledgment as Asian Americans. The profusion of recent publications on or by South Asian Americans also makes it difficult for AAS teachers and scholars to ignore South Asian American literature, history, anthropology, and other areas. But, what events in the last few years have made the AAAS (the organization and its members) begin to take note of South Asian Americans? What has increased the field's willingness to become more self-critical? Why is there an unspoken fear about offending "minorities" within the field? What does such a traveling spotlight do to the other marginalized groups, such as the Vietnamese and Pilipinos? How can AAS avoid inter-ethnic and inter-disciplinary hierarchies among and within groups? Specifically, how do South Asian Americanists deal with the alleged and real "hegemony" of scholars of Indian descent dominating "South Asian American" studies, as in the case of this essay? Finally, what can the field of Asian American studies learn from a focus on South Asian Americans? Although this essay does not specifically address many of these questions here, we propose some of these issues as avenues for further scholarly inquiry.