The “Primal Scene” of Immigration and the Interstitial Plight of the Asian American Subject

Examining the immigration of ethnic minority subjects in the American context, this paper aims to critically intervene in the conservative, ideological management of immigration by the American nation-state, which repetitively evokes the reified "otherness" of immigrant minority subjects while surreptitiously using them to obtain its political leverage in maintaining and reinforcing the already established social order. Employing several key concepts, such as the "primal scene" of immigration and the "interstitial ethnic subject," this study analyzes and exposes the hidden, manipulative ideological base and orientation of American national discourse, which is predicated upon constant but ever untenable practices of policing "others within." "The primal scene of immigration" in this paper refers to a fabricated historical myth and the discursively manipulated rhetoric about the "birth" of the Asian American minority subject in America. Drawn from Freud's notion of the primal scene and applied to the case of immigration, the term "primal scene" explicetes the psycho-political repercussion of immigration in general and its long-term effects on the descendants of Asian immigrants in particular. In the discourse of both the primal scene and immigration, there is the common recurrent focus on the alleged "origin." Thus, a careful analysis of the "interstitial" plight of Asian Americans who are repeatedly thrust back to the threshold of admittance to the U. S. nation sate highlights the need for a critical intervention in the trauma-inducing American discourse and politics about immigration, ethnicity, and nationality.