Complicity and Complexity: Cosynthesis and Praxis

Masthead Logo DePaul Law Review Volume 49 Issue 3 Spring 2000: Symposium - Bridging Divides: A Challenge to Unify Anti-Subordination Theories Article 2 Complicity and Complexity: Cosynthesis and Praxis Peter Kwan Follow this and additional works at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/law-review Recommended Citation Peter Kwan, Complicity and Complexity: Cosynthesis and Praxis, 49 DePaul L. Rev. 673 (2000) Available at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/law-review/vol49/iss3/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Law at Via Sapientiae. It has been accepted for inclusion in DePaul Law Review by an authorized editor of Via Sapientiae. For more information, please contact , . COMPLICITY AND COMPLEXITY: COSYNTHESIS AND PRAXIS Peter Kwan* I. INTRODUCTION Theorists are often accused of not having much to offer to people engaged in political struggles.1 This is an accusation frequently made of critical or postmodern theorists whose language is perceived, often correctly, to be difficult to comprehend and uselessly alienating.2 Without wishing to defend critical or postmodern theorists against this accusation (even though I believe it to be defensible), in this article I wish to offer a counter-example to this accusation. I wish to begin this article by grounding it on a narrative about an actual public event. At this event, and as a member of the invited guests, I witnessed a rather * B.A., LL.B, LL.M (Hons.) (Sydney), LL.M (Columbia). My deepest gratitude goes to my research assistant, Travis Wise, for his invaluable service and friendship on this and many other enterprises. Good luck Travis. 1. See Eric K. Yamamoto, CriticalRace Praxis: Race Theory and Political Lawyering Practice in Post-Civil Rights America, 95 MICH. L. REV. 821, 825 (1997). In recounting the case of Ho v. San Francisco Unified School District, No. C-94-2418-WHO (N.D. Cal. Mar. 8, 1996), where a group of Chinese Americans challenged the legality of a school district's desegregation order, Yamamoto notes: Interestingly, progressive race theorists have not joined lawyers and activists behind the scenes or in the litigation trenches. Nor has their work, which critically interrogates questions of race, culture, and law, informed the framing, concepts, or language of the suit .... The Ho litigation, I suggest, reveals a disjuncture between progressive race theory and frontline political lawyering practice ... Yet, with much to share and with racial conditions in the balance, progressive theorists and lawyers seemingly fail to connect in meaningful ways. Id. at 825-27. 2. See Kenneth Lasson, Scholarship Amok: Excesses in the Pursuitof Truth and Tenure, 103 HARV. L. REV. 926, 943 (1990). Let us suppose that the purpose of law is the betterment of society. Although it is hard to see how the esoterica so often offered up by law reviews has any measurable application to real-life problem-solving, let us assume these writers do have something serious to say that may be of value to society's decisionmakers, whether it is about law and literature, critical legal studies, feminist law - or dog bites in South Carolina. Is there any justification for not saying it with greater clarity? All too frequently the language of scholars is "far removed from the emotions, language, and understandings of the great majority of human beings," and the law they seek to analyze, criticize, explain, or change is lost in a sea of verbal molasses. Id. DEPAUL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 49:673 disturbing spectacle. I want to dwell on what it is about this spectacle that made it so disturbing to me and others, and what conclusions we can draw from it about race, sexual orientation, and gender, as well as exploitation, subordination, and the possibility of political coalition through new ideological conceptualizations. In other words, I wish to interpret the spectacle by engaging some contemporary identity theories within legal scholarship, and then illustrate how those theories might yield practical political lessons. Therefore, the aim of this article is not only to bridge the divide between anti-subordination theories, as the title of this Symposium suggests, but also to bridge the divide between theory and praxis. II. THE SPECTACLE Because I believe in telling stories, 3 here is my story: I live near San Francisco. Like other large cities in the West, San Francisco has two community-based organizations that address issues pertaining to gay Asian men. One of these community organizations serves gay interracial partners (overwhelmingly configured as white and Asian), and the other restricts membership only to gay Asian men. In San Francisco, the white and Asian group is called Pacific Friends of San Francisco, often described as a social organization for gay Asian men and "their partners and friends," a euphemism for white gay men. 4 The latter, an Asian-only group, is called the Gay Asian Pacific Alliance, or GAPA. 5 Analogous racial divisions of groups exist with regard to 3. See generally Symposium, Legal Storytelling, 87 MICH. L. REV. 2073 (1989) (discussing methods of legal storytelling); Kathryn Abrams, Hearing the Call of Stories, 79 CAL. L. REV. 971 (1991) (emphasizing the importance of feminist storytelling); Jane B. Baron & Julia Epstein, Is Law Narrative?,45 BUFF. L. REV. 141 (1997) (discussing the various aspects of and controversies surrounding legal storytelling); Jerome McCristal Culp, Jr., Autobiography and Legal Scholarship and Teaching: Finding the Me in the Legal Academy, 77 VA. L. REV. 539 (1991) (telling Professor Culp's own story as a Black law professor); Jerome McCristal Culp, Jr., Telling a Black Story: Privilege, Authenticity, "Blunders," and Transformation in Outsider Narratives,82 VA. L. REV. 69 (1996) (responding to criticisms of his previous article Autobiography); Richard Delgado, On Telling Stories in School: A Reply to Farberand Sherry, 46 VAND. L. REV. 665 (1993) (responding to criticisms of a narrative scholarship of non-majoritarian authors). 4. Pacific Friends of San Francisco describes itself as a social organization advocating friendship and cross-cultural understanding amongst gay Asians/Pacific Islanders, their partners and their friends. Founded in 1984, the club has grown to over 300 active members represented mostly by men residing in communities throughout Northern California. Its membership includes singles and couples of all ages and ethnicities sharing a common purpose - friendship, respect and mutual support for one another. Pacific Friends of San Francisco (visited Nov. 6, 1999) <http://www.PacificFriends.org>. 5. GAPA describes itself as an organization dedicated to furthering the interests of gay & bisexual Asian/Pacific Islanders by creating awareness, by developing a positive collective identity and by es- 2000] COMPLICITY AND COMPLEXITY gay African American men and, to a lesser extent, gay Hispanic men. There has been a long and unpleasant histor (...truncated)