Expertise Project:
Primal Scenes: Queer Childhood in “The Shoyu Kid”
By David Eng
“The effects of the specular domain on Asian American male subjectivity are expanded upon in this chapter through a focus on the visibility of the Japanese American male body during wartime internment. In particular, Lonny Kaneko’s “The Shoyu Kid,” which is set in Idaho’s Minidoka concentration camp, exposes and reworks—indeed, “shows you”—the mechanisms of this specularity”(Eng 110).
This is the crux of Eng’s argument. In other words, Eng argues that invisibility and visibility in the context of ethnic identity within the United States have a constantly evolving, reflexive relationship and both invisibility and visibility work in tandem to alter the image of Asian American to fit the current political and social climate of the “nation-state”. What we positively and negatively identify as Asian American is not finite and alters itself with the course of history. He then places this argument in the context of the short story “The Shoyu Kid,” and explains how this shifting image of the Asian American has negative effects on the development of identity in Asian American children, specifically during wartime internment. This is accomplished through the use of Jacques Lacan’s Mirror Image theory and Freud’s Primal Scene.
Eng introduces this concept, and the article with a discussion of Chinese invisibility as a negative social construct in America and compares/contrasts it to the hyper-visibility of Japanese Americans during WWII. His example highlights that in recent history both invisibility and visibility have had negative effects on the specularity of the Asian American. The article deals in “the realm of the visible” and how the identity development of the children in the story is affected by the predominant images of white male heterosexuality contrasted the by lack of Japanese adult male heterosexual images. The discussion is divided into two sections, Lacan’s Mirror Image theory and Freud’s Primal Scene:
Lacan- “According to the logic of the mirror stage, sense of self is introduced from the outside in, through an “other” in the form of this external image”(111). In the most concise of explanations, Lacan’s mirror theory discusses the development of an infant’s identity through identification with an external image. What Lacan does not discuss, and what Eng asserts is that racial difference has an effect on the way that children experience these images. In “The Shoyu Kid,” the boys mimic a game of cowboys and Indians, associating themselves with John Wayne and other white male heterosexual images. Because they have no adult Japanese men visible they attempt to identify with these white images and become fragmented as a result. Their inability to identify with the white male images and the fragmented and broken nature of the only elderly Japanese male mentioned in the story causes a rift in the boys image associated identity.
In Edinburgh an example of Mirror Image theory causing a negative association would be Fee’s associating his developing homosexuality with Big Eric’s pedophilia as a result of seeing Big Eric molest other boys, particularly Peter, and the romantic and sexual desire that Fee had begun to feel for Peter before the abuse began. The image of male-to-male sexual contact as demonstrated by Big Eric allowed Fee to associate the image of himself and Zach experimenting sexually with pedophilia, rather than homosexuality.
In an article by Todd. O. Williams Lacan’s Mirror Image theory is applied to Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s poem “The Mirror”. Williams argues that the recognition of objects that refuse to provide fulfillment result in the fragmentation of identity. He places the argument and theory in the context of romantic relationships rather than race, but his argument supports Eng’s assertion that dissociation of image in the Mirror Image stage can result in the fragmentation and dislocation of a developing identity.
Freud- Freud’s primal scene is defined as the moment when an infant sees and hears its parents “copulating” without any real understand of what’s going on (125). This primal scene opens the door for both a positive and negative Oedipal trajectory, the positive meaning the infant identifies with the father and desires the mother, negative meaning the infant identifies with the mother and desires the father (128). The primal scene must be examined through “deferred action,” where “the importance of a memory is assigned only after the fact, its significance becoming clear through its juxtaposition with a latter series of events” (125). Itchy sees the molestation of the Shoyu Kid, but cannot rationalize it in terms of “normal” heterosexual male standard yet.
Taking Freud’s Oedipal complex into consideration, the boys’ not being able to identify with the masculine images of the cowboys aids Eng’s argument over the “positive” and “negative” Oedipal trajectories. Because the cowboys represent the white heterosexual male, and the boys are forced to identify with the Shoyu Kid and his “Japaneseness,” which, according to Eng, leads to the potential of their realizing a homosexual identity.
Mitchell Greenberg offers an analysis of Freud’s examination of the Oedipal complex. While Eng seems to interpret Freud’s argument to mean that the primal scene and Oedipal trajectories originated from inside the Japanese American boys, implanted and cultivated by historical context and their subjective positions in the internment camps, Greenberg argues that in the original Oedipus story, Oedipus’ incestuous relationship with his mother originates not in Oedipus’ own desires, but in the larger arena of fate. It was because of Oedipus’ father that Oedipus is punished.
Ultimately, Greenberg’s argument comes down to the examination of the cyclical nature of the Oedipal complex. While Eng focuses more of the specific trajectories and development of the Oedipal complex as they apply to “The Shoyu Kid,” Greenberg views the Oedipus story with more of a bird’s-eye view, saying broadly that physical desires can merely distract or completely corrupt—or “wreak havoc on civil life” (40)—because of how powerful or culturally acceptable/unacceptable they may be, but that these desires can all be traced back to an initial corruption/distraction that helped define and limit the desires in the first place.
Outside sources aside from Edinburgh or Eng Article:
Greenberg, Mitchell. “Racine, Oedipus, and Absolute Fantasies.” Diacritics 28.3 (1998): 40-61. Project MUSE.Web.31.Oct. 2010.
Williams, Todd O. “Reading Rosetti’s THE MIRROR through Lacan’s Mirror Stage.” Explicator 67.1 (2008): 48-51. Project MUSE. Web.1.Nov.2010.
