What’s wrong with my work…

And then there are the days when you find clear, coher­ent cri­tiques of what you’re attempt­ing, and you think, yes, these are exactly the doubts I have about my work, exactly the quer­ies that arise, exactly what I mean when I say: is what I’m doing enough, effect­ive, the right thing to do?

I will not aban­don the pro­ject of enact­ing justice. Enact­ing justice in queer Asian Amer­ica involves a rear­tic­u­la­tion of the Uto­pian pos­sib­il­it­ies of com­munity build­ing against the dis­en­abling impulses of the dom­in­ant social order. Too many schol­ars have given up on this pro­ject, pre­fer­ring instead to “the­or­ize the sub­ject” by detail­ing the myriad ways in which we might be thought to exist. Some of those the­or­ies are com­pel­ling, but some of them seem point­less and detached. Worse, some blur import­ant dis­tinc­tions between action and nego­ti­ation, inclu­sion and rep­res­ent­a­tion, power and power­less­ness. Too many act­iv­ists have given up as well, focus­ing instead on indi­vidual expres­sion and nar­ciss­istic explor­a­tions of vic­tim­iz­a­tion, leav­ing justice and other lofty ideals to the scholars.

Aguilar-San Juan, Karin. “Going Home: Enact­ing Justice.” Q&A: Queer in Asian Amer­ica. eds. David L. Eng & Alice Y. Hom. Phil­adelphia: Temple Uni­ver­sity, 1998: 25–40.

Well yes, okay, except that one of my major issues is with “com­munity build­ing” if it means a queer Asian micro-com­munity. But I am keenly inter­ested in col­lectiv­ity build­ing, in net­works and con­nec­tions between us that can be polit­ical and powerful.

I could give you a “what I did on my week­end” type of post, but this is more import­ant. Maybe I’ll do that tomorrow.