On Not Speaking Chinese: Living Between Asia And The West

Leading cultural thinker Ien Ang engages with urgent questions of identity in an age of globalization and diaspora. Ang reflects upon tensions between Asia' and the West' at a national and global level, and considers the disparate meanings of Chineseness' in the contemporary world. Ang then turns to the West', exploring the paradox of Australia's identity as a Western' country in the Asian region, and tracing Australia's uneasy relationship with its Asian neighbors, from the White Australia policy to contemporary multicultural society. Finally, Ang draws together her discussion of Asia' and the West' to consider the social and intellectual space of the in-between', arguing for a theorizing not of difference' but of togetherness' in contemporary societies.