Between Foreigners and Heroes: Asian-Argentines in a Multicultural Nation by Chisu Teresa Ko

Considering that Asians in Argentina are often assumed to be "too few" or otherwise "too foreign" – not only because of their racial and cultural difference but also because of their imagined status as transient urban migrants – their increased visibility in contemporary cultural manifestations is remarkable. While Asians have not become principal or normative actors in Argentina's cultural imaginary, representations of Asians have notably increased in frequency and become generally more positive. An overwhelmingly negative image as laughable, inarticulate, and greedy has given way to a still stereotyped yet positive image. The global embrace of multiculturalism as an important social value has in part encouraged the visibilization of Asian cultures in the form of ethnic festivities performed for a broader public (e.g., Chinese New Year, the Korean Thanksgiving "Chuseok," parades showcasing ethnic garments and objects), some of which are institutionally sponsored by the country of origin as well as the Argentine state, which considers "the support for celebrations and festivities of foreign communities" an essential step to overcoming discrimination.$^{34}$ But they have also gained significant visibility in more spontaneous cultural manifestations including stand-up comedy, television, literature, theater, and most recently, film, suggesting that Asians have also reached the mainstream cultural imaginary.

I have argued elsewhere that the new protagonism of Asians in public life and cultural products is intrinsically linked to Argentina's shift toward a new multicultural paradigm, not only because of multiculturalism's greater tolerance toward racial others but also because Asians play a significant symbolic role in the production of contemporary multicultural discourses. Historian Arif Dirlik posits that Asia's growing economic power after the Cold War has allowed it to challenge previous identifications of modernity with the West and make "alternative cultural claims on the modern. " In this sense, particularly regarding Japanese-Argentines, I have argued that their symbolic flexibility – which encompasses images of hyper-tradition, hyper-modernity, and global reach as well as the undesirable racial other – makes them "ideal champions of multiculturalism for their ability to articulate disparate" and at times contradictory – demands of contemporary multiculturalism.

In other words, because of multiculturalism's intrinsic oscillation between inclusion and exclusion – recognizing minorities on the one hand but trying to preserve racial hierarchies on the other – Asians provide symbolic unity to the simultaneous desires to be modern and traditional, multicultural and monocultural. Racially essentialized, culturally exoticized, and different not only from Argentina's dominant whiteness but also from its traditional minorities, Asians have functioned as a highly visible marker of the nation's incipient multiculturalism.

Three recent films with Asian protagonists – Un cuento chino, Mujer conejo, and Samurai – suggest, however, that Asians' role in the national narrative has come to transcend their role as tokens of multiculturalism. Given the symbolic significance of Asians in reconfigurations of modernity emblemized now by globalization and multiculturalism, coupled with the centrality of multiculturalism in Argentina's discourses of nation (as a way to transcend the previous exclusionary version of the nation), I suggest that Asian-Argentines and their representations have become an important site of national articulation. By analyzing these three films, I will argue that in a post-crisis Argentina that aspires to be multicultural, Asians play a meaningful symbolic role: as challenges to previous discourses of the modern nation and as mediators of a new national unity.