Summary Of The Oriental Obscene

In The Oriental Obscene, Chong (2012) applied theories and approaches of psychoanalysis on the United State that went through Vietnam War and discussed how the violent or uncanny images demonstrated by the media at the time impacted American’s imagination of races. She defined “Oriental” as an exoticized, generalized, and phantasmatic other that serves to build up an identity by identifying/recognizing the self and the other (for both individuals and nations). In this sense, the term that is generally known as the “East” or “Asia(n)” is remotely a simple geographic or biological idea; it is rather a type of imagination (or fantasy), which is similar to Anderson’s definition of nation—“imagined political community.” Therefore, “seeing race”