Citizenship & Culture

1. Citizenship & Culture

2. Recap • So far this quarter, we’ve investigated how national culture develops and produces the nation in a number of key “sites” • Domesticity • (gendered, racialized, classed) normativity • familial relations as a cultural vocabulary • Slavery • history, progress, memory • definition of American “freedom” • property relations as fundamental

3. And now… • In our last few weeks, we will turn our attention to questions of “citizenship” in an American Cultural Studies frame. • And we will look at Asian American cultural production as a “site” of crucial “counter-narratives” to U.S. national culture.

4. Culture & Citizenship • Claim: “Citizenship is a purely formal relation defined by law, and has no bearing on a study of culture” • Defined by “empirical” factors like birthplace, marriage, naturalization procedures, immigration law • Category which grants one a “formal” and “unmarked” relation to the State and to popular sovereignty • Lisa Lowe’s article obviously argues against this view, but how? • What is “cultural” about “citizenship” specifically? • What role do issues of identity, representation, and difference play in the construction of the citizen?

5. Culture & Citizenship • Background on No-No Boy • First published in 1957 to almost no attention. • Based in Seattle’s “I District” • “No-no boys” were young men who answered “no” to questions 27 and 28 on the WRA’s “Leave Clearance Form” • Problematic questions for a number of reasons • "Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty wherever ordered?" • "Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, to any other foreign government, power or organization?"