'Start Narrative Here': Excess and the Space of History in Asian Diasporic Films

Abstract

This article considers the fraught relationship between memory, culture and politics in an analysis of Asian diasporic film. The privileging categories of race and nation as the key determinants of Asian diasporic identity are resisted. Instead, through analyses of specific filmic segments from such feature films as Wayne Wang's 'Chan is Missing' (1982), Srinivas Krishnan's Masala (1991) and Gragg Araki's Totally Fucked Up (1994); and such shorter films by diasporic women as Lise Yasui's Family Gathering (1988), Pam Tom's Two Lies (1989), Hellen Lee's Sally's Beauty Spot (1990), Janice Tanaka's Memories from the Department of Amnesia (1991), it is argued that the narrative of space, and specifically the space of racist, gender and homophobic violence, opens up the possibility of multiple forms of political excess. It enables, for instance, the contestation of dominant cinematic processes of suture through an elaboration of diasporic, feminist and queer space, and the displacement of Asian American identity beyond the master signifiers of race and nation through a consideration of diasporic history and the history of gender and sexuality. Yet, through this process of contesting, the very category of Asian diasporic film is brought to crisis. It is in the negotiation of these complex histories and the development of other languages that the effectiveness of Asian American film as counter-memory is situated.