ABSTRACT
The “Transpacific” has emerged as an interdisciplinary—across area studies, ethnic studies, and postcolonial studies—paradigm that examines the intersecting flows of people, culture, and capital across the Pacific Ocean. As an analytical model, the transpacific focuses on the linkages and movements produced when national, ethnic, and disciplinary particulars are put into contact. The “model minority discourse” pits self-enterprising minorities against those who organize against structural inequality and press for systemic material redistribution. This measurement of human capital through logics of individuated instrumentality, Helen Heran Jun argues, positions “model” minorities as ideal global subjects that “not only discipline ‘bad’ racial minorities but also constitute a neoliberal episteme.” The affective attachments Mei accrue beyond bloodkin and life worlds transfigures regimes of social inscription and material extraction. Tying individual social liberties to individualist freedoms of consumption and ownership, neoliberal ideologies often relegate signifiers of identity into the realm of personal rather than public responsibility.
