Becoming Asian American: Racialized Re-Subjectification and Après-Coup

Abstract

Given the unthought reality of Asian American experiences, I propose 2 processes that can be used to organize racialized subjective experience: (1) Steven Stern’s model of “airless worlds” and the processes of identification, deconstruction and re-subjectification and (2) the nature of après-coup recognition of subjective experience and meaning in the service of deconstruction and re-subjectification. I provide autobiographical examples to illustrate Asian American identification with negation, après-coup recognition, racialized re-subjectification, and the impact of these processes on her clinical work as a psychoanalyst.