Abstract
Employing the distinction between explicit and implicit rules as formulated by psychoanalytic theorist and philosopher Slavoj Žižek, this article examines the way in which challenges toward an initial rule-based fantasy take place within transnational families. In particular, the article employs an implicit, unwritten rules framework to assess the effect of transpacific migration on the institution of family within the Chinese American diaspora as represented in post-World War II fiction by Asian Pacific authors C.Y. Lee and Shawn Wong. Suggesting five implicit rules underpinning Chinese American families, the article examines Lee’s The Flower Drum Songto highlight early challenges to these rules before finding in Wong’s Homebasean unflinching adherence to an implicit rule concerning reverence for ancestors. Wong has the advantage of writing in the wake of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act and of being in a position to trace more and more challenges to the initial fantasy following later waves of transpacific migration. His novel American Kneesis then shown to epitomize the implicit rules being stretched almost to breaking point as, for instance, the criteria for spouse selection becomes no longer Chinese or partially Chineseor even Asian or partially Asian but Americanization.
Highlights
Employing the distinction between explicit and implicit rules as formulated by psychoanalytic theorist and philosopher Slavoj Žižek, this article examines the way in which challenges toward an initial rule-based fantasy take place within transnational families
In the early to mid-1960s some American psychiatrists began to conceive of the family structure as governed by rules that were almost always implicit – for example, “Share your feelings and encourage others to share their feelings” or “Make decisions together as a family”
We can see Master Wang as pointing to at least one implicit, unwritten rule for any Chinese American family member: he or she must carry on the tradition of showing honour and respect for the family’s ancestors, including respect for parents
Summary
Employing the distinction between explicit and implicit rules as formulated by psychoanalytic theorist and philosopher Slavoj Žižek, this article examines the way in which challenges toward an initial rule-based fantasy take place within transnational families. Sometimes making reference to public Law as encapsulated, for instance, in the US’s 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, the focus is almost entirely in keeping with Žižek’s linking of ideology and implicit rules.1 This perspective provides a paradigm for examining the way in which in the fiction of two Asian Pacific authors – Chin Yang Lee (generally referred to as C.Y. Lee) and Shawn Wong – has meditated on the evolution of the implicit rules underlying the fantasy that gave birth to the post-mid-twentieth-century Chinese American family following transpacific migration to the west coast of the US from China.
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