Sunny Xiang
Tonal Intelligence: The Aesthetics of Asian Inscrutability During the Long Cold War
Tonal Intelligence: The Aesthetics of Asian Inscrutability During the Long Cold War
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- More about Tonal Intelligence: The Aesthetics of Asian Inscrutability During the Long Cold War
During the mid-twentieth century, U.S. intelligence organizations were preoccupied with demystifying East and Southeast Asia due to the cold war's ambiguous nature between "Oriental" enemies and Asian allies. Sunny Xiang's Tonal Intelligence examines this through a reading practice centered on tone, engaging state records and aesthetic texts from the periods to rethink the marking and making of race during the long cold war.
Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 368 pages
Publication date: 15 December 2020
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Sunny Xiang presents a fresh perspective on the American cold war in Asia by exploring the aesthetic manifestations of "Oriental inscrutability" across a diverse range of texts. Through her analysis, she sheds light on how cold war regimes of suspicious thinking created a confusion between "Oriental" enemies and Asian allies, contributing to the paradoxical nature of the conflict as both a "real war" and a "long peace." Xiang brings together interrogation reports, policy memos, and field notes with novels, poems, documentaries, and mixed media works by artists such as Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ha Jin, and Trinh T. Minh-ha. By engaging her archive through a reading practice focused on tone, she juxtaposes Asian diasporans who may appear similar on the surface but differ significantly in their tone.
Tonal Intelligence delves into two interconnected periods of geopolitical transition: American "nation-building" in East and Southeast Asia during the mid-twentieth century and Asian economic modernization during the late twentieth century. By examining both state records and aesthetic texts from these periods for their tone rather than their content, Xiang demonstrates how past threats of Asian communism and emerging regimes of Asian capitalism have elicited distinct yet related anxieties about racial intelligibility. This book employs bold methods, unconventional archives, and meticulous close readings to reimagine the marking and making of race during the long cold war.
Weight: 498g
Dimension: 153 x 227 x 22 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780231196970
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