8 Literature Review: The Theoretical Framework

In constructing a theoretical framework, I will be drawing from C Wright Mill’s Sociological Imagination, Durkheim’s qualitative/quantitative time, Sorokin’s social/clock time, Weber’s class situation/distinction, in addition to Itzigsohn’s “In a Land of Opportunities” from Encountering American Faultiness and García-Peña’s “Writing from El Nié: Exile and the Poetics of Dominicanidad Ausente” from Borders of Dominicanidad as a means of further dissecting diasporic memory practices.

C Wright Mills’ “The Sociological Imagination. The Promise” signifies the ways in which one’s biography is influenced by societal forces and simultaneously informs those forces at large. More so, Mills emphasizes the use of the imaginative as a vehicle for understanding the positionality of someone’s history given how institutional structures can dictate the narrative of individual experiences (Mills 2000: 2). The sociological imagination enables the possibility to see beyond the one-dimensional frameworks of understanding a given biography and asks us to see the complexities, nuances, and intercorrelations between the individual and the societal (Mills 2000: 3).

Conversing with Mill’s Sociological Imagination, Weber discusses the differentiation between classes and communities as nonsynonymous, but rather, interwoven aspects that inform one another. Class situation as Weber defines is dependent on the living conditions, accessibility to supplies, and life experiences one goes through due to income (Weber 2013: 183). Hence, one’s class situation is heavily integrated with one’s market situation. In accessing higher class environments, Weber details how the access or lack of property influences the position of one’s class situation (Weber 2013: 187). Though class and community are not embodiments of one another, class situation “emerges only [through] communalization” (Weber 2013: 188). One’s communal status is not necessarily dependent on one’s class situation, and vice-versa, though macro-societal structures that influence hierarchies of desirability can cause communal status and class situation to intermingle (Weber 2013: 184).

In “In a Land of Opportunities?” from Encountering American Faultiness, Itzigsohn examines the Dominican diaspora experience of  “socioeconomic incorporation in American societies” (Itzigsohn 2009: 45). Towards defining socioeconomic class, Itzigsohn defines “employment, education, poverty, and income” as four key factors towards one’s socioeconomic position (Itzigsohn 2009: 46). Itzigsohn additionally introduces how stratified societies can consequently cause internal stratifications, more specifically how the second generation reconciles understandings of one’s position between two worlds (Itzigsohn 2009: 50). What Itzigsohn defines as “ethnoracial stratification” helps dissect how immigrant mobility in socioeconomic spaces can be constricted due to being “part of a racialized class system” (Itzigsohn 2009: 64). As it relates to this paper’s discussion, Itzigsohn’s analysis of racial stratification helps to further characterize the social positionings the Korean diaspora occupies in relation to life in the States. The second-generation, navigating between a liminal spacing of two cultures, are shown to have higher education and income gain than the first-generation, though not as significant as white second-generation communities (Itzigsohn 2009: 67). The racial stratification that is embedded in American culture actively enforces discriminatory practices in not just socioeconomic mobility but in daily life as well (Itzigsohn 2009: 70).

George Simmel’s concept of the Stranger characterizes the “potential wanderer” as existent within the intermediary space of divergent places (Simmel 1950: 402). The dialectic of what Simmel defines as “of nearness and remoteness” embodies the tension in which the stranger negotiates (Simmel 1950: 402). With signification placed on trade and notions of expansion, the stranger is placed within the crosshairs of movement and brings into interrogations of origins. The stranger as “no owner of soil” further signifies the liminality in which this figure occupies (Simmel 1950: 402).

Corresponding with Simmel’s depiction of the stranger is Josefina Baez’s conceptualization of El Nié. García-Peña’s “Writing from El Nié: Exile and the Poetics of Dominicanidad Ausente” from Borders of Dominicanidad: Race, Nation, and Archives of Contradiction examines how Dominican diasporic creatives negotiate questions of personhood, representation, and belonging. In examining works produced by writers and artists, García-Peña highlights how new poetics are being created to depict transnational complexities the diaspora experience (García-Peña 2016: 173). Questions of genealogy, national identity, and return are interrogated as a means of understanding memories of “colonial and state violence” that are interlinked to the position the diaspora inhabit (García-Peña 2016: 177). In conversation to this paper’s discussion, the subject positionality of the Korean diaspora, specifically Korean military brides, similarly occupies a space of displacement propagated by the nation-state agenda of national rebuilding. García-Peña offers generative speculation into the ways in which the diaspora reconfigure what it means to occupy multiple positionalities and create new spaces of belonging. García-Peña use of Ausente as the “complex position Dominican migrants occupy within both national territories” closely intermingles with Baez’s conceptualization of El Nie as the “interstitial space of longing” or “neither here nor there” (García-Peña 2016: 188). El Nie brings into interrogation questions of statehood legibility and challenges normative notions of fixated identifications of personhood. The regenerative nature of El Nie considers the possibilities in which plurality of places can coincidently inhabit a constructed space in which the imagined is seen as potentiality. The interwoven descriptions of space, time, and self are negotiated within  El Nie where “geographical imaginaries and historical spaces” articulate the multiplicities of one’s experiences. Processes of disidentification and embodiments of citizenship are understood through ways in which identity and memory are remembered, forgotten, and reimagined (García-Peña 2016: 190).