Dissertation Defense: Corrine Sugino

This dissertation considers how contemporary Asian American racialization interacts with multicultural discourses of (false) inclusion. My research responds to the question: how do flexible rhetorics of Asian American inclusion and exclusion interact to racialize Asian Americans, and what vocabularies might we produce for critiquing and/or thinking beyond these logics? Drawing on sources in media, law, and popular culture, I argue that contemporary racial discourse figures Asian Americans as both mimicking and anathema to Western Man. In doing so, I consider how this slippery quality of the category of “Asian American” functions as a key nexus point around which multiculturalism revolves. Moreover, I intervene in scholarship discussing discourses such as colorblindness and post-racialism by identifying a related, yet distinct discourse I term “multicultural anti-racism,” which co-opts the language of anti-racism to expand racial violence.