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Model Minority Masochism

There are few grand narratives that loom over Asian Americans more than the “model minority.” While many Asian Americanist scholars and activists aim to disprove the model minority as “myth,” author Takeo Rivera instead rethinks the model minority as cultural politics. Rather than disproving the model minority, Rivera instead argues that Asian Americans have formulated their racial and gendered subjectivities in relation to what Rivera terms “model minority masochism.” Rivera details two complementary forms of contemporary racial masochism: a self-subjugating masochism which embraces the model minority, and its opposite, a self-flagellating masochism that punishes oneself for having been associated with the model minority at all.
Drawing from performance studies, queer theory, techno-orientalism, and new media studies, Model Minority Masochism covers a range of contemporary objects across multiple media that variously exhibit and deepen these iterations of masochism: the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin and its multiple performance responses, the plays of Philip Kan Gotanda and Ping Chong, experimental fiction, Marvel comics, and the video game Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Building upon previous models of melancholy and castration, Model Minority Masochism offers a new theory of Asian American subject formation that accounts for both resistance and accommodation vital for the contemporary moment.