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This essay elaborates a notion of a "subjectless" Asian/American critique, following the work of Kandice Chuh and others but in relation to the specific aesthetic devices available through the theater. This Asian/American critique builds on a Deleuzian relationality specifically developed through a formalist interpretation of playwright Naomi Iizuka's 36 Views and At the Vanishing Point . By placing Asian American studies, theater, and the Deleuzian notion of the fold into a critical constellation, the project rethinks the value of these terms and their utility in unpacking aesthetic discourses and geopolitics.

Inspired by Avery Gordon's evocative envisioning of a transformative social existence, Kandice Chuh's Imagine Otherwise analytically employs Asian American literature to unravel and reflect upon the complex dimensions of the category "Asian America."1 This productive enterprise questions the underpinnings of Asian American studies itself. As a field undergoing theoretical self-reflection, contemporary Asian American studies has often been characterized by the controversy over its representational politics. Since the fields inception in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Asian American studies scholars have been struggling with the epistemological question of its object of knowledge. Chuh "advanc(es) a critical approach to the study of Asian American literatures that conceives of that work as theoretical devices that

by the publication of Marlon Horns essay on Chinese American literature in Taiwan in 1982, Asian American studies has gradually established itself in Taiwan's academies since the 1980s.1 Taiwan has since witnessed both the growing consumption of Asian American culture in popular media and the emergence of Chinese American literature as an academic field. Amy Tans The Joy Luck Club and David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly were both well received in Taiwan, not just for their own literary merits, but also for their notable adaptation to films.2 The success of Wayne Wang's film version of The Joy Luck Club (1993) made Tan arguably the bestknown Asian American author in Taiwan, and her later books, including her latest essay collection, The Opposition of Fate (2006), were all translated and published there. In addition to Tan's publications, the works of Frank Chin, Maxine Hong Kingston, and a younger generation of Chinese American writers such as Fae Myenne Ng, Gish Jen, and Eric Liu have also grabbed the attention of students and scholars in Taiwan's Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures.3 The presence of immigrant novels in Chinese by such writers as Yan Geling and Hong Ying along with the success of Asian/ American films from Ang Lee's Wedding Banquet ( 1 993) to Justin Lin's Better Luck Tomorrow (2004) at the box office have also enhanced the visibility of Asian Americans in Taiwan through the lens of diaspora and transnationalism. Whereas scholars are engaged with organizing conferences on Asian American literary studies and publishing their research in international journals, graduate students in Taiwan also find interest in the critical study of Chinese American literature.4 Shan Te-hsing, a research fellow at Academia Sinica, has pointed out that more than forty master theses on Chinese American literature have been produced in Taiwan in recent years, and the scholarship continues to grow.5 Shan also collaborated with Sau-ling Wong at the University of California, Berkeley, on a translation project to publish canonical Asian American texts in Chinese-language markets, hoping to introduce Asian American literature to a wider audience beyond U.S. borders. Since the 1980s, scholars in Taiwan

THE APPEARANCE OF LISA LOWE'S IMMIGRANT ACs: ONASIANAMERJCAN CULTURAL Politics is a landmark event for Asian American studies. Her achievement can be summarized by pointing to Immigrant Acts' three hallmark features: its ability to carry out a study of Asian American culture that is interdisciplinary in more than just name, its demonstration of the integral place and function of Asian Americans in American history and culture, and its exploration of Asian immigration as a site that condenses the contradiction between global capitalism and representative democracy which, the book argues, is a fundamental feature of American society and politics. Through focusing on "immigrant acts," Lowe is able to situate her work firmly in the context of immigration as the canonical American trope of selfformation and national origins. Yet, by stressing the material implications surrounding immigration from Asia, Lowe successfully re-articulates this canonical trope by bringing into question the assumptions of democratic possibility, capitalist opportunity, and national self-sufficiency that undergird the immigrant mythology of America. Thus, while the texts and events that form the examples of the book usually concern Asian Americans or are produced by them, the theoretical impact and usefulness of Immigrant Acts

SINCE THE 1968-1969 THIRD WORLD STRIKE AT FRANCISCO STATE College and University of California-Berkeley, when Asian American studies emerged as part of the political/educational agenda of Ethnic studies, the field has attained a fair degree of respectability and maturity.' A number of universities and colleges now offer courses in Asian American studies, a variety of English department courses often include Asian American literature, and most recently, the University of California, Santa Barbara has established the nation's first Asian American studies department. In addition, the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) has grown into a nationally recognized academic association with an annual meeting, and the AAAS regularly sponsors a panel at the yearly American Studies Association conference. The maturity of the field, in terms of published scholarly work, was exemplified with the publication of Ronald Takaki's Strangers From a Diferent Shore: A History of Asian Americans (1989) and Sucheng Chan's Asian Americans: An Interpretive History (1991). These two survey texts of Asian American history marked the point at which enough research had already been published to warrant and sustain the writing of two synthetic, yet interpretive, studies of the histories of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, and South and Southeast Asian Americans. Utilizing primary and secondary sources, these two scholars summed up a whole generation of Asian American historical studies and thus provided the field with standards by which future synthetic historical work in the field will be measured. With