Centering the Immigrant in the Inter/National Imagination

California Law Review

Volumn 85, Issue 5, 1997, Pages 1395-1396

  Chang, Robert S ^a   Aoki, Keith ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0347108837     PISSN: 00081221     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3481063     Document Type: Article

References (5)

1. This statement incorporates the notion of subject positions where the immigrant describes one subject position of a person in a specific relation to the nation. By subject position, we mean the following: Within every society, each social agent is inscribed in a multiplicity of social relations - not only social relations of production but also the social relations, among others, of sex, race, nationality, and vicinity. All these social relations determine positionalities or subject positions and every social agent is therefore the locus of many subject positions and cannot be reduced to only one . . . . Furthermore, each social position, each subject position, is itself the locus of multiple possible constructions, according to the different discourses that can construct that position. Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and New Political Subjects: Toward a New Concept of Democracy, in MARXISM AND THE INTERPRETATION OF CULTURE 89-90 (Cary Nelson & Lawrence Grossberg eds., 1988). In addition to describing a subject position, the immigrant also exists as a discursive formation that is itself a site of contested meanings. By discursive formation, we mean: Whenever one can describe between a number of statements, such a system of dispersion, whenever, between objects, types of statement, concepts or thematic choices, one can define a regularity (an order, correlations, positions and functionings, transformations), we will say, for the sake of convenience, that we are dealing with a discursive formation. . . . The conditions to which the elements of this division (objects, mode of statements, concepts, thematic choices) are subjected we shall call the rules of formation. The rules of formation are conditions of existence (but also coexistence, maintenance, modification, and disappearance) in a given discursive division. MICHEL FOUCAULT, THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 38 (A.M. Sheridan Smith trans., 1972).
2. This statement incorporates the notion of subject positions where the immigrant describes one subject position of a person in a specific relation to the nation. By subject position, we mean the following: Within every society, each social agent is inscribed in a multiplicity of social relations - not only social relations of production but also the social relations, among others, of sex, race, nationality, and vicinity. All these social relations determine positionalities or subject positions and every social agent is therefore the locus of many subject positions and cannot be reduced to only one . . . . Furthermore, each social position, each subject position, is itself the locus of multiple possible constructions, according to the different discourses that can construct that position. Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and New Political Subjects: Toward a New Concept of Democracy, in MARXISM AND THE INTERPRETATION OF CULTURE 89-90 (Cary Nelson & Lawrence Grossberg eds., 1988). In addition to describing a subject position, the immigrant also exists as a discursive formation that is itself a site of contested meanings. By discursive formation, we mean: Whenever one can describe between a number of statements, such a system of dispersion, whenever, between objects, types of statement, concepts or thematic choices, one can define a regularity (an order, correlations, positions and functionings, transformations), we will say, for the sake of convenience, that we are dealing with a discursive formation. . . . The conditions to which the elements of this division (objects, mode of statements, concepts, thematic choices) are subjected we shall call the rules of formation. The rules of formation are conditions of existence (but also coexistence, maintenance, modification, and disappearance) in a given discursive division. MICHEL FOUCAULT, THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 38 (A.M. Sheridan Smith trans., 1972).
3. Throughout United States history, politicians and scholars have celebrated this aspect of American exceptionalism. For one overview, see ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER, JR., THE DISUNITING OF AMERICA: REFLECTIONS ON A MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY (1992). See also Gabriel J. Chin, The Civil Rights Revolution Comes to Immigration Law: A New Look at the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, 75 N.C. L. REV. 273, 339-45 (1996) (discussing the comments of various political leaders on immigration, assimilation and the melting pot).
4. Throughout United States history, politicians and scholars have celebrated this aspect of American exceptionalism. For one overview, see ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER, JR., THE DISUNITING OF AMERICA: REFLECTIONS ON A MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY (1992). See also Gabriel J. Chin, The Civil Rights Revolution Comes to Immigration Law: A New Look at the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, 75 N.C. L. REV. 273, 339-45 (1996) (discussing the comments of various political leaders on immigration, assimilation and the melting pot).
5. Hiroshi Motomura, Whose Alien Nation?: Two Models of Constitutional Immigration Law, 94 MICH. L. REV. 1927, 1944-45 (1996). This project of national self-definition vis-à-vis the immigrant inevitably intersects with the project of national self-definition vis-à-vis this country's racial minorities. We discuss the implications of this infra Part I.