COSMOPOLITANISM, ETHNIC BELONGING, AND AFFECTIVE LABOR: HAN ONG'S FIXER CHAO AND THE DISINHERITED

Abstract

Asian American literature has often depicted the Filipino service laborer as a figure desiring global belonging, forgetting that figure's opposite: the cosmopolitan, Asian American client who desires “ethnic belonging” by consuming Filipino service labor. Drawing on Pheng Cheah's notions of cosmopolitanism, Patterson investigates a dual concept of cosmopolitanism that sees elite migrants as “high cosmopolitans,” and services workers as “low cosmopolitans.” Through two novels by the Filipino migrant writer Han Ong, Patterson compares Ong's “low‐cosmopolitan” service laborers, who are motivated by a desire for high cosmopolitanism, with their “high‐cosmopolitan” clients, who seek an ethnic authenticity that can only be provided through the affective laborer. As Patterson argues, the contradiction between the commodification of Asian cultures and the vulnerability of the worker raises questions about diasporic subjectivity and contemporary multicultural ideals as they intersect with mobility, class, and service labor.