The Pacific has long been a space of conquest, exploration,
fantasy, and resistance. Pacific Islanders had established
civilisations and cultures of travel well before European explorers
arrived, initiating centuries of upheaval and transformation. The
twentieth century, with its various wars fought in and over the
Pacific, is only the most recent era to witness military strife and
economic competition. While "Asia Pacific" and "Pacific Rim" were
late twentieth-century terms that dealt with the importance of the
Pacific to the economic, political, and cultural arrangements that
span Asia and the Americas, a new term has arisen-the transpacific.
In the twenty-first century, U.S. efforts to dominate the ocean are
symbolized not only in the "Pacific pivot" of American policy but
also the development of a Transpacific Partnership. This
partnership brings together a dozen countries-not including
China-in a trade pact whose aim is to cement U.S. influence. That
pact signals how the transpacific, up to now an academic term, has
reached mass consciousness. Recognising the increasing importance
of the transpacific as a word and concept, this anthology proposes
a framework for transpacific studies that examines the flows of
culture, capital, ideas, and labour across the Pacific. These flows
involve Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific Islands. The
introduction to the anthology by its editors, Janet Hoskins and
Viet Thanh Nguyen, consider the advantages and limitations of
models found in Asian studies, American studies, and Asian American
studies for dealing with these flows. The editors argue that
transpacific studies can draw from all three in order to provide a
critical model for considering the geopolitical struggle over the
Pacific, with its attendant possibilities for inequality and
exploitation. Transpacific studies also sheds light on the cultural
and political movements, artistic works, and ideas that have arisen
to contest state, corporate, and military ambitions. In sum, the
transpacific as a concept illuminates how flows across the Pacific
can be harnessed for purposes of both domination and resistance.
The anthology's contributors include geographers (Brenda S. A.
Yeoh, Weiqiang Lin), sociologists (Yen Le Espiritu, Hung Cam Thai),
literary critics (John Carlos Rowe, J. Francisco Benitez, Yunte
Huang, Viet Thanh Nguyen), and anthropologists (Xiang Biao, Heonik
Kwon, Nancy Lutkehaus, Janet Hoskins), as well as a historian
(Laurie J. Sears), and a film scholar (Akira Lippit). Together
these contributors demonstrate how a transpacific model can be
deployed across multiple disciplines and from varied locations,
with scholars working from the United States, Singapore, Japan and
England. Topics include the Cold War, the Chinese state, U.S.
imperialism, diasporic and refugee cultures and economies, national
cinemas, transpacific art, and the view of the transpacific from
Asia. These varied topics are a result of the anthology's purpose
in bringing scholars into conversation and illuminating how
location influences the perception of the transpacific. But
regardless of the individual view, what the essays gathered here
collectively demonstrate is the energy, excitement, and insight
that can be generated from within a transpacific framework.
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