The Rise of Marxism in Asian American Studies

I think that Asian American studies has always been interested and invested in the question of capitalism. Labor is a huge, you know, it's a huge cornerstone of the field. I feel like there's just so much for that Marxism can teach whether or not you read it for the methodology, which is what someone like Vijay Prashav would recommend.

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Note: The following is an unlocked episode originally released on May 7 for our Patreon and Substack subscribers. Enjoy!

Hi everyone,

Today, a more scholarly episode: Andy speaks with Prof. Iyko Day of Mount Holyoke College’s English program, discussing her book Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism (Duke, 2016).

In the book, she analyzes different moments in the history of Asian migration to North America and their attendant racialization. In particular, we discuss the association of Asian immigrants with "excessive economic efficiency." That is, the basis of anti-Asian racial sentiment has been the idea that Asians represent a hyper-efficient economic threat. Anti-Asian racism, then, is a sort of misplaced, reactionary revolt against capitalism itself.

Examples span from the 19C. "yellow peril" of Chinese miners and railroad workers, culminating in Chinese Exclusion; fears of Japanese property ownership, buttressing WWII internment; and even now, the "model minority" stereotype of post-1965 Asian immigrants ("high-tech coolies" in white-collar jobs, engineering, tech), who are both revered for their efficiency but also scapegoated for the abstract and destructive ills of globalization.

I see Day's work as contributing to literature on the history of racial ideas specific to the history of capitalism. Most famously, we have books and essays on how slavery and segregation turned the social categories of "White" and "Black" into biological ones by the nineteenth century. But of course, her intervention is to theorize the specificity of Asian racialization.

Thus, Anti-Asian racism is not simply analogous to anti-Black racism, for instance, which centers on ideas of biology and inferiority, but rather represents something abstract and threatening, personifying and embodying the destructiveness of capitalist value. In this sense, it is closer to modern anti-Semitism.

Ultimately, Day returns to the bigger question of how Asian racialization fits alongside other racial forms in North America, such as indigenous, Black, Latinx, etc.

Other topics include: the politics of being a PMC Asian, fears of "alien capital" around the world, locating the role of literature and art, the relationship between borders and prisons, and joining reading groups for Marx’s Capital.

Also, a quick note: this episode’s format is a bit different. Alien Capital was actually chosen for the inaugural session of the TTSG Discord’s new monthly (?) book club back in April/May. We discussed the book one week before this episode, and later, Andy spoke with Prof. Day online, with listeners in attendance.

The first half is our interview; the second half (49:30) features questions from the Discord community themselves (one calling in from a van full of listeners) either spoken directly or read out loud by Andy.

Finally, a few works referenced in the conversation:

Colleen Lye, America's Asia: Racial Form and American Literature

Moishe Postone, "Anti-semitism and National Socialism"

Moishe Postone, Time, Labor, and Social Domination

John Kuo Wei Tchen and Dylan Yeats, Yellow Peril!: An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear

Barbara Fields, "Slavery, Race and Ideology in the USA"

Sylvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch

Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag

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