An Asian American Political Theology: Immonde (2)

In this blog, I describe Mark Lewis Taylor's articulation of immonde or the "weight of the world" and proceed to ask an important question: are Asian Americans today "weighted" by the world? Are we struggling under the weight of immonde and are trying to reshift immonde-ness to monde-ness?  Well, the end goal that I hope to unveil is that Asian America is struggling under a veiled weightedness, a weightedness of insecurity.  This is an ontological insecurity, an open questioning of, Who am I really; in the context of Asian American Christianity, it is this: Who am I as a child of God?  The wrong answer is some career choice.  To use myself as an example, who am I as a child of my mother?  The answer is both obvious and not.  Obviously - perhaps, in this hamartiological totality of a world we live in, ideally - the answer is that this is not something of my choice; it was imputed to me by my mother.  My mother (and father, let's not forget) chose, and here I was.

But yet, something characterizes me as a child of my mother.  I am Presbyterian; my mother's Methodist.  Yet, I remain a child of my mother.  I am more progressive orientatively; my mother is rather conservative orientatively.  Yet, I remain a child of my mother.  I could be a heathen terrorist, my mom an absolute, ineffable saint and yet, I would still remain a child of my mother.  Why is that?  From a Chinese perspective, our ontology is confirmed by our activity.  I do, therefore, I am.  I am happy when my mother calls, and I happily wish her a joyous Lunar New Year.  Love languages are different, of course, and in ministry we are confronted with the clash of different love languages, when what parents expect of their children out of love is interpreted as interfering in their ontological development, for instance.  But the fact remains; I do, therefore, I am. (Why else would I do?) I am, therefore, I do.

This, by the way, is my definition of Evangelicalism, and it is a very broad definition; too broad and too inclusive to satisfy conservative and progressive Christians.  But I will stick with it, nonetheless.  And because I stick with it, it makes this articulation of an Asian American political theology a decidedly Evangelical one.  Not necessarily conservative, mind you.  But decidedly Evangelical.  Evangelical, because I insist that as a child of God, I know because God has done stuff for me; I do, because I am a child of God.  It matters not whom I do it to, myself, my neighbors, my community, society at large, because I am a child of God.

But one major question: do what?

Let me suspend this question temporarily, because what we can do, and should do, are wrapped up in our ontological condition as people bearing the "weight of the world."  Consider Mark L. Taylor's story near the beginning of The Theological and the Political where he recalls an event during his prison internship in his seminary days.  A prisoner, a number within the massive incarceral complex of the USA, hurls his full tray of food in Taylor's general direction, missing him but hitting a warden staff.  Everyone, however, was struck by his rage, his rage at being weighed down by the immonde that is the American incarceral complex.  His hurling of food, however, was one of very few options available to him.  In a Discovery Channel® program on the San Quentin Maximum Security Prison just north of San Francisco, the warden showed the various weapons fashioned from plastic cutlery and even the elastic bands in their underwear.  I am quite struck that even being pressed down on all sides by the "weight of the world," the prisoners displayed resourcefulness in pushing back, in reconfiguring the immonde into monde.

First, I've been using the term immonde and it's time I dig a bit into it.  This is a term stemming from the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy in his book La Création du Monde ou la Mondialisation.  Immonde is tied with the increasingly technologically-driven globalization that is engulfing the globe.  This globalisation (not to be confused with mondialisation) threatens independence.  We see it perhaps best represented in the Eurozone in the wake of the Euro Crisis.  The Greek way of life, which is part and parcel for the economic inefficiencies in the Greek system, must give way to the German modus operandi.  The eschatological result is total conformity, not to God mind you, but to the markets.  Or, dare we say, the Markets are God.  Immonde is dehumanizing, a commoditizing of human life and culture such that they are to be used and thrown away as necessary to some instrumental end. (This is usually Market-determined.)

I am, by the way, not denigrating the importance of submission as a Christian virtue.  I am not saying we all should assert our way or the highway.  In normal circumstances, we should submit to governing authorities and not drag race on a public highway.  The submission I refer to is not voluntary; it is coerced.  It can be a rational coercion, in the sense that we are coerced to elect a certain choice rationally, but this choice robs us of our humanity.  Think of the Foxconn workers in China - Foxconn is Taiwanese, by the way - who have a choice; they could stay in the farms and earn $10 a week, or work these mind-numbing jobs assembling iPhones and iPads for $50 a week.  Rationally, you and I would pick the latter.  But this is not really freedom of choice in the sense that they are invested in this career.  Rationality coerces them into this mind-numbing lifestyle.

Within immonde, this oppressive state of "un-worldliness", there must always be resistance.  To simply just sit down and "take it all in" is simply insane.  The Foxconn workers, for instance, erupted in unified resistance, as did the Chinese railroad workers in the 1850s in California.  This resistance does not have to be an active pushback; you don't have to be a student protestor at Berkeley.  Sister Dianna Ortiz, who appears in The Theological and the Political, was burned, gang raped multiple times, even lowered into a large hole full of newly dead, decaying, decapitated, bodies, or half-dead and still living people.  She made it a habit to carry a razor through her ordeals, knowing that at the very least, she had the option of taking her own life, sparing her from this misery.  This silent razor was her pushback; that is something even the "weight of the world" cannot take away from her.

Asian Americans today do not altogether encounter such extreme examples of immonde.  Truth be told, they exist.  Just before the 48th Superbowl, a prostitution ring was busted in New York, and the people freed were Koreans.  Many of the undocumented workers in the United States are Asian.  And let's not forget the garment sweatshops in New York City where many Chinese undocumented workers work for less than minimum wage.  These instances of immonde are very important to address, but few of us (or maybe all of us) aren't dealing with such immonde.  Note: I do not intend to try to compare and contrast oppressive experiences.  Small "micro-oppressive" instances are no less debilitating as large ones. The question I want to ask is, are Asian Americans in general, from the Chinese living in the Lower East Side of New York to those living in Irvine, California, living under some "weight of the world"?

I will not rehearse the narrative that Connie Zhou made in her excellent blog post, "The Asian-American Awakening." If you haven't read it, read it - as in, click on the link and literally read it.  I will go ahead and read her text to excavate the immonde.  The "weight of the world" in Connie's text reveals a bi-dimensionality to the Asian American immonde.  Both of these are misrecognitions.  The first is what I may call "displacement."  The second is what I may call "mis-fulfillment." I will go deeper into each in the next post, but for now, I will simply define both in an initial fashion.

First, Asian-Americans are displaced people.  On the "Asian" side, we are considered impure.  To be Chinese and not speak Chinese is considered shameful.  Even if we were able to speak Chinese well, China/Hong Kong/Taiwan do not register as homes.  We don't know all the roads, we don't know the alleyway shortcuts, and we don't know where the best beef-noodle place is.  In Chinese-speak, we are not huaren, but huaqiao, Chinese residing abroad.  But, depending on where you are in the United States, we encounter microaggressive gestures to full-blown racist actions, even though America is our home.  The best example of the latter happened right after 9/11 when Middle Eastern-Americans and Indian-Americans were routinely targeted for being traitors.  In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, as Connie noted, analyses discussed ethnicity; but in the Columbine shootings, and the Newtown shootings, where the gunmen were Euro-Americans, there were no discussions on how being Euro-American may have had a hand in the shootings.  In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, why were Christians not targeted?  Why were stones not thrown at churches for being traitors?

Misfulfillment occurs when Asian-Americans fail to live up to stereotypes set up by the world.  We know the stereotypes: engineers, lawyers, medical doctors ("real doctors," not the Ph.D. types).  There is a misfulfillment of not rising up to the expectations set of Asian Americans.  We're expected to be brilliant in our studies.  We're expected to be above average.  The "tiger mom" stereotype certainly doesn't help, and neither does the "triple package."  But if so, why are Asian Americans oftentimes passed over for executive-level management?  No leadership skills - really?  No teamwork skills - oh?  So many Asian-Americans at Apple and Google, and yet no Asian American executives?  And so this immonde comes from rising up to unclear and arbitrary expectations.  And thus, to compete in a rational choice and expectations framework, you can only offer more labor at the same wage; you must work twice as hard.

Connie's text reveals a different sort of misfulfillment, and it is a similar immonde confronting a Foxconn worker.  I want to study history, but studying history doesn't make money (never mind Jamie Dimon, and countless other Wall Street CEOs...). And so the choice of an engineering career, however undesirable, is made out of rational expectations.  Again, this is an immonde caused by the rationality of globalisation.  And it can be destructive.  Imagine a person who is not created by God to be an engineer (i.e. physics is a challenge) and yet being compelled by rational choice and expectations to be one.  And then dropping out of school because a low GPA gets you nowhere.

What I intend to show is that an Asian American political theology arises from responses to these immonde.  There will be responses, and Connie's blog post is certainly one of them.  Others may include posting guitar videos on YouTube - you may see them as innocuous, but I think they're a pushback against the "weight of the world," classifying Asian Americans in rigid categories that deny them the fullness of God-given humanity.  But the question for theologians is how do we critically marshal these artful images, these art-forces and re-deploy them as public witness?