Review of "Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism" by Iyko Day (Duke University Press)

Iyko Day makes a compelling intervention in discussions of race, capital, and settler colonialism. Her book presents a theorization of the abstract economism of Asian racialization by examining how social differentiation functions as a destructive form of abstraction anchored by settler colonial ide...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Rachel Kuo
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Cultural Studies Association 2017-07-01
Series:Lateral
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.25158/L6.2.15
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author Rachel Kuo
author_facet Rachel Kuo
author_sort Rachel Kuo
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description Iyko Day makes a compelling intervention in discussions of race, capital, and settler colonialism. Her book presents a theorization of the abstract economism of Asian racialization by examining how social differentiation functions as a destructive form of abstraction anchored by settler colonial ideologies of romantic anticapitalism. By engaging with capitalism’s abstraction of differentiated gendered and racialized labor in order to create value, Day’s project diverges from scholarship arguing that capitalism profits from labor via the production, rather than the abstraction, of racialized difference (Lowe 1996; Roediger 2008). Her book engages a rich multimedia archive and uses principal historical instances of Asian North American cultural production as theoretical texts to examine key racial policies since the 19th century: Chinese railroad labor in the 1880s, anti-Asian immigration restrictions; internment of Japanese civilians during World War II, and the neoliberalization of immigration policy in the late 1960s.
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spelling doaj.art-5aa64eb7a0e44b21965ada7aee31fd2d2022-12-22T03:40:54ZengCultural Studies AssociationLateral2469-40532017-07-016210.25158/L6.2.15http://csalateral.org/reviews/alien-capital-asian-racialization-settler-colonial-capitalism-day-kuo/Review of "Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism" by Iyko Day (Duke University Press)Rachel KuoIyko Day makes a compelling intervention in discussions of race, capital, and settler colonialism. Her book presents a theorization of the abstract economism of Asian racialization by examining how social differentiation functions as a destructive form of abstraction anchored by settler colonial ideologies of romantic anticapitalism. By engaging with capitalism’s abstraction of differentiated gendered and racialized labor in order to create value, Day’s project diverges from scholarship arguing that capitalism profits from labor via the production, rather than the abstraction, of racialized difference (Lowe 1996; Roediger 2008). Her book engages a rich multimedia archive and uses principal historical instances of Asian North American cultural production as theoretical texts to examine key racial policies since the 19th century: Chinese railroad labor in the 1880s, anti-Asian immigration restrictions; internment of Japanese civilians during World War II, and the neoliberalization of immigration policy in the late 1960s.https://doi.org/10.25158/L6.2.15alienasiancanadacapitalismimmigrationlaborsettler colonialism
spellingShingle Rachel Kuo
Review of "Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism" by Iyko Day (Duke University Press)
Lateral
alien
asian
canada
capitalism
immigration
labor
settler colonialism
title Review of "Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism" by Iyko Day (Duke University Press)
title_full Review of "Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism" by Iyko Day (Duke University Press)
title_fullStr Review of "Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism" by Iyko Day (Duke University Press)
title_full_unstemmed Review of "Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism" by Iyko Day (Duke University Press)
title_short Review of "Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism" by Iyko Day (Duke University Press)
title_sort review of alien capital asian racialization and the logic of settler colonial capitalism by iyko day duke university press
topic alien
asian
canada
capitalism
immigration
labor
settler colonialism
url https://doi.org/10.25158/L6.2.15
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