Rey Chow

Anne Firor Scott Prof of Literature in Trinity Clg of Arts/Sciences Rey Chow

In late-capitalist Western society, cross-ethnic cultural transactions are an inevitable daily routine. Yet, according to acclaimed cultural critic Rey Chow, the notion of ethnicity as it is currently used is theoretically ambivalent, confusing, indeed self-contradictory, straddling as it does an uneasy boundary between a universalist rhetoric of inclusion on the one hand, and actual, lived experiences of violence and intolerance on the other. To drastically reconceptualize ethnicity in the contemporary world, Chow proposes that it be examined in conjunction with Max Weber's famous theory about the Protestant work ethic and capitalism, which holds that secular belief in salvation often collaborates effectively with the interpellation, disciplining, and rewarding of subjects constituted by specific forms of labor. The charged figure that results from such a collaboration, resonant with the economic, psychological, and spiritual implications of the word "protest, " is what she refers to as the protestant ethnic. Chow explores the vicissitudes of cross-ethnic representational politics in a diverse range of texts across multiple genres, including the writings of Georg Lukacs, Michel Foucault, Max Weber, Jacques Derrida, Fredric Jameson, Etienne Balibar, Charlotte Brontë, Garrett Hongo, John Yau, and Frantz Fanon; the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Marguerite Duras, and Alain Resnais; and the cartoon drawings of Larry Feign. Tracing out hauntingly familiar scenarios from stereotyping and coercive mimeticism to collective narcissistic abjection, the rise of white feminist racial power, and intraethnic ressentiment, Chow articulates a series of interlocking critical dialogues that challenge readers into hitherto unimagined ways of thinking about an urgent topic.

The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism

" . . . this is no doctrinaire tract but rather a concerted attempt to look at important cultural problems from a fresh perspective. . . . Chow's book is an excellent example of its type."--Discourse & Society "I believe that Rey Chow has written a powerful set of essays which offer a critical strategy for approaching questions of otherness and other societies by forcing us to constantly reassess our position." --Harry Harootunian Writing Diaspora questions aspects of cultural politics, including the legacies of European imperialism and colonialism, the media, pedagogy, literature, literacy, sexuality, intellectual labor, the uses and abuses of theory, and popularized notions about "others."

Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies

Writing Diaspora

Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema

Primitive Passions

Recognizing the necessity for a critique of idealism constitutes for Chow an ethics in the postcolonial, postmodern age. In particular, she uses "ethics" to designate the act of making decisions - in this context, decisions of reading - that may not immediately conform with prevalent social mores of idealizing our others but that, nonetheless, enables such others to emerge in their full complexities.

Theory, Culture, Ethnicity, Reading

Ethics After Idealism

DIVAn exploration of the theoretical and political consequences of the post-Enlightenment “self” and of the concept of self-referentiality./div

Anne Firor Scott Prof of Literature in Trinity Clg of Arts/Sciences Rey Chow

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