Inhuman Citizenship

Juliana Chang claims that literary representations of Asian American domesticity may be understood as symptoms of America's relationship to its national fantasies and to the "jouissance"-a Lacanian term signifying a violent yet euphoric shattering of the self-that underlies those fantasies. In the national imaginary, according to Chang, racial subjects are often perceived as the source of jouissance, which they supposedly embody through excesses of violence, sexuality, anger, and ecstasy-which threaten to overwhelm the social order.