Deconstructing “Asian American”: as Disidentity,Racial Character Structures,and Polymorphous Becomings

Abstract

In this article, the author shares observations and preoccupations that have arisen in the process of founding The Asian American Center for Psychoanalysis. They make use of these experiences as an entryway into the various terrains of Asian American: as a term, as a category, as subject, and as a field of study. They highlight the potentiality of affinity based spaces for backgrounded and dissociated self-states to reemerge, rethink Asian American as “disidentity”—as theorized by late Cuban queer scholar José Esteban Muñoz, introduce racial character structures, and offer four vignettes as explorations into the polymorphous becomings of Asian American.