Whiteness in Another Color: Winnifred Eaton (Onoto Watanna) and Intra-Racial Citizenship

另一個種族的白人優越性：溫妮芙瑞德‧伊頓（夫野渡名）和種族分化的美國公民權

Tan-feng Chang

《Tamkang Review》 48卷2期 (2018/06) Pp. 19-41

https://doi.org/10.6184/TKR201806-2

摘要

This article explores the global formations of race and politics of Asian American identity through Winnifred Eaton's Japanese writings. Drawing upon Colleen Lye, Helen Jun, Julia Lee, and Susan Koshy, this article shows how Eaton's work emblematizes the idea of American citizenship as an ＂intra-racial＂ construct by vying various racial subjects against one another for political and economic inclusion. In particularly her Japanese fictions, Eaton represents her Japanese heroines as a desirable subject and an embodiment of the ideal femininity and citizenship. This construction of Japanese superiority was contingent upon Japan's ascending role as a new power and its competition with European and American empires for dominance in the Asia-Pacific region in the early twentieth century. Eaton's work builds on global discourses of race and empire to challenge domestic racial violence and exclusion of Asian immigration in the United States. In her argument for Japanese eligibility to citizenship, Eaton posits the Japanese as a superior race, model citizens, and a deco-Ionizing force, which made them appear ＂whiter＂ than African Americans, Chinese Americans, and Irish Americans, who were rendered perverse and degenerated in her work. By endowing the Japanese subjects with a new strain of American values, Eaton expands and also counteracts whiteness as the defining feature in shaping American citizenship. Nonetheless, her claim to the superior subject position for the Japanese betrays her complicity with Japanese and American expansionist logics, showing the fact that her articulation of a Japanese American identity is made possible by displacing otherness to another race. Thus, in analyzing citizenship as an intra-racial construct, this article urges for the need to examine the politics behind inclusion as we uncover alternative expressions of belonging and community membership in the United States.

關鍵字

Asian American racial formation ； intra-racial citizenship ； Japanese American identity ； anti-essentialism ； early twentieth-century Japanese and US empires

並列摘要

本文旨在探究亞裔美國作家溫妮芙瑞德‧伊頓(Winnifred Eaton, 1875-1954)的日風作品蒙受全球化種族形塑和亞美身分認同政治學的影響。本文發展亞裔美國評論家賴可嵐(Colleen Lye)、鍾海倫(Helen Jun)、李茱莉亞(Julia Lee)、蘇珊‧柯許(Susan Koshy)之理論，突顯伊頓的作品如何象徵美國公民權作為「種族之間關係」的一個建構，此建構中，各種族主體必須為獲得政治和經濟上的融入而互相競爭。伊頓的作品再現她的日本女主角成為受歡迎的主體與理想女性和公民的體現。她對日本人優越性的建構是伴隨著日本在二十世紀初作為一個新興勢力並與歐美帝國角逐在亞太地區的霸權而來。伊頓的作品建立在全球化種族論述和帝國論述的根基上，並試圖藉此挑戰美國國內橫行的種族暴力和對亞洲移民的排斥。在她針對美國日本人應具獲取公民權資格的主張中，伊頓假設日本人為優勢民族，視他們為公民楷模，甚至是去殖民的一大表徵，使日本人看起來比非裔美國人、華裔美國人、愛爾蘭裔美國人還要「白」，後者經常在她作品中呈現偏執或墮落的形貌。她的作品賦予日裔主體嶄新的美國價值觀，進而能延展且抵制了白種人作為形塑美國公民權最重要的詮釋特質。然而，伊頓對日本人優越主體性的主張反映了她與日本和美國擴張主義不謀而合之處，透露她在日裔美國人身分建構時，不得不經由轉移其異質性至其他種族身上之謀略。故此，透過分析公民權作為種族之間關係調適與鬥爭的建構概念，本篇文章認為，在發掘其他不同的認同表達和社會屬性之際，更應檢視美國融合背後的政治學之必要性。

並列關鍵字

亞裔美國種族形塑 ； 公民權 ； 日裔美國身分認同 ； 反本質主義 ； 二十世紀初日本帝國和美國帝國

參考文獻

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Azuma, Eiichiro(2005).Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America.NY:Oxford UP.

Baldwin, James,Kenan, Randall(ed.)(2010).The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings.New York:Pantheon.

Eaton, Winnifred,Moser, Linda Trinh(ed.),Rooney, Elizabeth(ed.)(2003)."A Half Caste" and Other Writings.Urbana:U of Illinois P.

Eaton, Winnifred(1997).Me: A Book of Remembrance.Jackson, Miss.:Banner Books of the Mississippi UP.