immigrants and their American-born descendants repeatedly have had to seek admittance

and validation. In a circular motion that mercilessly revokes their lived history since

immigration, Asian immigrants and their descendants are often compelled to return to

and face the moment of their entry to America generation after generation. "To become a

'subject'" or a lawful citizen, as Judith Butler argues, is tantamount to submitting oneself

to the rules of the dominant ideology and "to have been presumed guilty, then tried and

declared innocent." Pointing out that this act of becoming and maintaining a social

subject depends on constant repetitive performances of proving one's legitimate status of

citizenship, Butler emphasizes the "tenuous" nature of the subject status attained by the

process.261 The tenuous status of the social subject becomes even more precarious for

Asian-Americans.

 To be an Asian-American subject in a white-dominant American society means, to

put it in Butler's phrases, to constantly find oneself trapped in a vicious circle of "being

presumed guilty, then tried, and declared innocent." The individual Asian-American's

history orprehistory leading up to admission to America becomes a negative alibi used

repeatedly against the claim for his or her legitimate social status as an American. For

example, the seemingly innocuous question, "Where are you from?" frequently addressed

to people of Asian descent, including those born in the United States, illustrates the point.

For Asian-Americans, their or their ancestor's entry into the United States becomes a

perpetual reference point. It becomes the "primal scene" that transfixes Asian-American

subjects in an ahistorical past.

 I here coin the term "the primal scene of immigration" to refer to a fabricated

historical myth and the discursively manipulated rhetoric about the "birth" of the Asian-