The Performative of Ethnicity-in-Common in the Plays of David Henry Hwang and Young Jean Lee

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In the American culture at the height of neoliberalism, ethnicity has been understood as something to be overcome and left behind in the past. Different from this trend, the question of ethnicity finds its way into the heart of performative utterances, as observed in Asian American theater and performances written in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. This essay examines the extent to which ethnicity contains plural forms of life without denying ethnic differences by focusing on David Henry Hwang's Chinglish and Young Jean Lee's Straight White Men. These plays do not feature Asian American characters on stage, but through a series of "likeness," they address ethnicity within a scene of plurality rather than as immanent to the individual. In the essay, such capacious thinking about ethnicity is called "ethnicity-in-common." By analyzing the instances in which the performative force of one’s ethnic presentation does not work or is unintentionally at work, the essay explores a time-space yet to come in which the language of ethnicity makes us imagine and inhabit plural forms of life.