Transnational Asia: Dis/orienting Identity in the Globalized World

This article provides a phenomenological analysis of the author's transnational migratory experience situated in historical and ideological contexts. Using vertigo as a metaphor, I theorize Althusser's ideological interpellation as a process and practice of dis/orientation. Focusing on several phenomenological moments, I politicize and historicize my sense of orientedness at the intersection of my “being Japanese” and “becoming Asian” within the dialectical tension between Asia and the West. I argue that the power of ideological interpellation lies not only in the discursive logic of identity politics but more importantly in the embodied, subjectively lived, and phenomenologically significant experiences in which an individual is hailed by multidirectional ideological forces.