In The Difference Aesthetics Makes cultural critic Kandice Chuh asks what the humanities might be and do if organized around what she calls “illiberal humanism” instead of around the Western European tradition of liberal humanism that undergirds the humanities in their received form. Recognizing that the liberal humanities contribute to the reproduction of the subjugation that accompanies liberalism's definition of the human, Chuh argues that instead of defending the humanities, as has been widely called for in recent years, we should radically remake them. Chuh proposes that the work of artists and writers like Lan Samantha Chang, Carrie Mae Weems, Langston Hughes, Leslie Marmon Silko, Allan deSouza, Monique Truong, and others brings to bear ways of being and knowing that delegitimize liberal humanism in favor of more robust, capacious, and worldly senses of the human and the humanities. Chuh presents the aesthetics of illiberal humanism as vital to the creation of sensibilities and worlds capable of making life and lives flourish.

In Mandarin Brazil, Ana Paulina Lee explores the centrality of Chinese exclusion to the Brazilian nation-building project, tracing the role of cultural representation in producing racialized national categories. Lee considers depictions of Chineseness in Brazilian popular music, literature, and visual culture, as well as archival documents and Brazilian and Qing dynasty diplomatic correspondence about opening trade and immigration routes between Brazil and China. In so doing, she reveals how Asian racialization helped to shape Brazil's image as a racial democracy. Mandarin Brazil begins during the second half of the nineteenth century, during the transitional period when enslaved labor became unfree labor—an era when black slavery shifted to "yellow labor" and racial anxieties surged. Lee asks how colonial paradigms of racial labor became a part of Brazil's nation-building project, which prioritized "whitening," a fundamentally white supremacist ideology that intertwined the colonial racial caste system with new immigration labor schemes. By considering why Chinese laborers were excluded from Brazilian nation-building efforts while Japanese migrants were welcomed, Lee interrogates how Chinese and Japanese imperial ambitions and Asian ethnic supremacy reinforced Brazil's whitening project. Mandarin Brazil contributes to a new conversation in Latin American and Asian American cultural studies, one that considers Asian diasporic histories and racial formation across the Americas.

There has been increasing Asian interest in Latin America in recent years, beginning with Japanese investment in the 1980s, and continuing into the present decade when there is growing investment by China. This book examines the nature and extent of Asian business and related activity in Latin America. It shows how investment is not just from Japan and China, with Korea and India also involved, and with Taiwan directly competing with China. It explores activity in the minerals and energy sector, and also in trade and other areas. It demonstrates how Asian activity has a wide impact on the countries of both South America and the Caribbean, making them less exclusively "the United States’ backyard"; how different countries are affected differently by Asian activity; and how the growing links with Asia increasingly open up the possibility of greater Latin American activity in Asia.

Until the late 1980s, Japan was the only country in Asia with notable political and economic relations. Since then, however, several Asian nations have perceived growing links with the Latin American region as a means of diversifying their political and particularly economic relations while many Latin American decision-makers have increasingly recognised the strategic importance of East Asia in their foreign policy and foreign economic policy designs. This book analyses the economic, political and socio-cultural relations between Asia and Latin America and examines their growing importance in international relations. In the first part of the book the contributors look at the policies, interests and strategies of individual Asian and Latin American states, while the second part delves into the analysis of multilateral institution-building in Asia-Latin America relations,. As such, Asia and Latin America will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate scholars of comparative politics, international relations, Asian politics and Latin American politics.

This book is a history of Asian slaves in colonial Mexico and their journey from bondage to freedom.

This “ groundbreaking book . . . is essential reading not only for the Filipino diaspora but for anyone who cares about the mysteries of racial identity” (Jose Antonio Vargas, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist). Is race only about the color of your skin? In The Latinos of Asia, Anthony Christian Ocampo shows that what “color” you are depends largely on your social context. Filipino Americans, for example, helped establish the Asian American movement and are classified by the US Census as Asian. But the legacy of Spanish colonialism in the Philippines means that they share many cultural characteristics with Latinos, such as last names, religion, and language. Thus, Filipinos’ “color” —their sense of connection with other racial groups—changes depending on their social context. The Filipino story demonstrates how immigration is changing the way people negotiate race, particularly in cities like Los Angeles where Latinos and Asians now constitute a collective majority. Amplifying their voices, Ocampo illustrates how second-generation Filipino Americans’ racial identities change depending on the communities they grow up in, the schools they attend, and the people they befriend. Ultimately, The Latinos of Asia offers a window into both the racial consciousness of everyday people and the changing racial landscape of American society.

DIVArgues for the saliency of the category of the subaltern over that of class./div