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EXISTENTIAL SURPLUS: AFFECT AND LABOR IN ASIAN DIASPORIC
VIDEO CULTURES
by
Feng-Mei Heberer
August 2015
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(CRITICAL STUDIES)
Object Description
| Title | Existential surplus: affect and labor in Asian diasporic video cultures |
| Author | Heberer, Feng-Mei |
| Author email | feng-mei@gmx.de;feng-mei@gmx.de |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | Cinema-Television (Critical Studies) |
| School | School of Cinematic Arts |
| Date defended/completed | 2015-04-20 |
| Date submitted | 2015-06-10 |
| Date approved | 2015-06-10 |
| Restricted until | 2017-06-10 |
| Date published | 2017-06-10 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Lippit, Akira Mizuta |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Hong, Grace Imre, Aniko Imre, Anikó Keeling, Kara |
| Abstract | Existential Surplus: Affect and Labor in Asian Diasporic Video Cultures investigates contemporary identity discourses in Asian diasporic film and video. As the first substantial study of Asian diasporic media in North America, Western Europe, and East Asia, this project analyzes the media works as worldmaking tools that reimagine dominant fictions of belonging. Specifically, at a time when ethnic and racial diversity are transforming into social capital and symbolizing the “good” nation‐state, I examine how Asian diasporic media makers reformulate notions of minoritarian personhood by staging subjects and affinities that are foreclosed by and, indeed, unsettle established identity narratives. Within this context, my research investigates the emergence of negative affect as a political strategy across personal documentaries, experimental videos, and recorded performances from the last decade. With a focus on the visual work of queer Asian German filmmakers (Ming Wong, Wayne Yung), female Asian American performance artists (Kristina Wong), and Southeast Asian migrant workers in Taiwan, I analyze how these diasporic agents mobilize affective registers of queer desire, depression, cruel optimism, and sentimentality to defy their social invisibility. At the same time, I explore how these artists and migrant workers deploy these emotional investments to offer narratives of political grievance, everyday survival, and intimate social worlds that move notions of belonging beyond the frameworks of national inclusion and ethnic kinship. Ultimately, I argue that this body of works collectively combines into what I call existential surplus—a repertoire of diasporic subjectivities that allows alliances that might not be legible in existing terms to come to the surface as objects of representation. Combining close reading with discourse analysis and social critique, the dissertation approaches affect thus not only as carrier of omitted Asian diasporic histories. I conceptualize affect as an analytic that allows for a new reading practice of transnational affinities. |
| Keyword | Asia; diaspora; labor; affect; race; gender; sexuality; transnational; video; performance; disability studies; precarity |
| Language | English |
| Format (imt) | application/pdf |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | Heberer, Feng-Mei |
| Physical access | The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright. The original signature page accompanying the original submission of the work to the USC Libraries is retained by the USC Libraries and a copy of it may be obtained by authorized requesters contacting the repository e-mail address given. |
| Repository name | University of Southern California Digital Library |
| Repository address | USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 7002, 106 University Village, Los Angeles, California 90089-7002, USA |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Filename | etd-HebererFen-3464.pdf |
| Archival file | Volume2/etd-HebererFen-3464.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | EXISTENTIAL SURPLUS: AFFECT AND LABOR IN ASIAN DIASPORIC VIDEO CULTURES by Feng-Mei Heberer August 2015 A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (CRITICAL STUDIES) |
