Adopted Territory

How can we understand identity and adoption in the era of globalization? Eleana Kim's Adopted Territory was an eye-opening project, covering topics that I had never thought about before. 

In the first chapter, I immediately recalled the Abu-Lughod article "Do Muslim Women Need Saving?" in which much of the discourse surrounding Korean transnational adoption developed during and after the Korean War in the 1950s. Kim highlights how the Korean War was a consequence of rising tensions between the Soviet Union and the United State--two superpowers that effectively divided a nation over ideological differences. This was coupled with the rise of pronatality after the turn of the 20th century--the sort of socio-political focusing on the child as a site of compassion and need for care. This is ironic in which the "West" creates a problem for Korea and then jumps at the task of providing humanitarian aid. The reason that I linked this to "Do Muslim Women Need Saving?" is because it invokes this sort of "savior" complex. Because white American (sometimes) middle class families were bombarded with this propaganda of Korean orphans needing saving, they were willing to donate to orphanages or adopt them in order to contribute in some way to making the world a little bit better. It also struck me as odd. when she recounts some of the archival work done in Korea about adoptions during the 1950s that failed or didn't go through, the challenges brought up by American potential adopters. The Korean government would clear a child to be adopted just for them to rescind the "transaction" several months later, with the reasoning that the child had grown too attached to the foster family or a father had retrieved the child and didn't want to give him/her up. The reaction of the American potential adopters is understandable through the framework of capitalism (and thinking of the move toward globalization and neoliberalism). They became frustrated by this failed transaction because it's almost like they see this as an exchange of goods and materials, rather than people (and we can get into how problematic THAT is). These Americans become combative, yet they fail to recognize that these are children with their own personality and emotions. I think this also highlights the paternalism that is perpetuated with the conflict in the first place.

I was also particularly struck by Kim's discussion of kinship and existential issues that are experienced by Korean adoptees. I have read about understanding kinship order and structures differently through Judith Butler, and I'm glad that Kim brought in an analysis that is similar to hers. The adoptee disrupts our normalized understanding of kinship order because we commonly understand this a being traceable through blood and genetics.  What Kim shows is a sort of disruption of these traditional orders in which there can be a widening of the spectrum of what is considered "kinship." We see it all the time today--there are very few family models that follow the nuclear family. These can include larger extended families, adoption, migrant workers, and same-sex couples. These adoptees "rework ways of doing and knowing kinship in increasingly public domains beyond the domestic or private, thereby producing new kinds of social identities and intimate relationships" (Kim 87). This discussion on kinship and identity made me think about why we need to know our origins. In the case of the adoptees, it seems like a very complex concept because of the fact that there are a discontinuities between family, community and state. While they may feel "at home" with their families, outside of the familial realm there's a dissonance with the community because of racial difference. It also brings up the questions of whether assimilation into a community is possible, when one doesn't see themselves represented in the community.