Belong Anywhere? Airbnb’s Corporate Narratives as Emotional Governance

Abstract

700 Feminist Studies 47, no. 3. © 2021 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Nina Medvedeva Belong Anywhere? Airbnb’s Corporate Narratives as Emotional Governance in February 2017, Dyne Suh, her fiancé, two friends, and their dogs were supposed to enjoy a short vacation at the Big Bear Lake ski resort in California. Thirty minutes before they pulled into their Airbnb rental, the host canceled on Suh with the message, “One word says it all: Asian. It’s why we have Trump.”1 Suh’s party was left stranded without shelter on top of a mountain in the middle of a snowstorm.2 In a viral YouTube video, Suh speaks about the racism she endured between sobs: There’s no bounds to racism—no matter what class you are, no matter what your education level, no matter if you’re an American citizen. What they see is that I’m Asian. What they see is my race and this is how we get treated . . . No matter if I follow the law, if I’m kind to people, no matter how well I treat others it doesn’t matter. If you’re Asian, you’re less than human and people can treat you like trash.3 1. Chris Sommerfeldt, “California Airbnb Host Banned for Naming President Trump as Reason to Refuse Asian-American Guest,” New York Daily News, April 8, 2017, https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/trump-citingairbnb -host-banned-refusing-asian-american-guest-article-1.3032358. 2. Amy B. Wang, “‘One Word Says It All. Asian’: Airbnb Host Reportedly Leaves Guest Stranded Because of Her Race,” Washington Post, April 7, 2017, https://wapo.st/2o6JOPi. 3. Scuba Steve, “Trump Supporter Cancels Asian Woman’s Airbnb Stay,” video, 2:43, April 5, 2017, https://youtu.be/nuZn8iVQbSc. Nina Medvedeva 701 Fortunately for Suh, her party was able to find emergency lodging and received a full refund after contacting Airbnb. Months later, Airbnb banned the host; the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing ordered the host to pay Suh $5,000 and take a course in Asian American studies. In response to these developments, Suh posted the following affirmation on Facebook: “Your pain is not insignificant and you are not alone. . . . The more [Asian Americans] speak out, the harder it becomes for people to ignore, deny, or trivialize our lived experiences of being discriminated against like this day-to-day.”4 Suh is not alone in her experience. Hundreds of users in the United States have charged Airbnb with racial and anti-LGBTQ discrimination through hashtag social media campaigns like #AirbnbWhileBlack, #AirbnbWhileAsian, and a takeover of Airbnb’s own #HostWithPride. The corporation responded to the claims in the same they did with Suh’s case—working to redress harm and restore a sense of belonging to the Airbnb community, however tenuous it may be. Taking these events as a backdrop, I theorize the work of the emotions of belonging and redress. I build on feminist theorizations of the interrelation between affect, labor, and racial capitalism to explore what role emotion—the knot of affect, social life, governance, and subjectification —plays in constituting Airbnb’s corporate community and maintaining a member’s attachment.5 Instead of assuming that a corporation ’s failures create revolutionary opportunities to imagine otherwise , I track how institutions use these very failures to strengthen their own projects and viability. I argue that while the processes of redress embrace a critique of racialized and gendered logics that render people of color and queer people disposable in the United States, such attempts to redress individual harms still leave a larger structure intact. I conceptualize how Airbnb’s corporate narratives offer a political project that promises to overcome the shortcomings of racial capitalism. I provide a case study of how corporations govern emotions that tap into what Airbnb calls “the universal human yearning to belong—the desire 4. Amy B. Wang, “Airbnb Host Who Stranded Guest Because of Race Ordered to Take Class in Asian American Studies,” Washington Post, July 14, 2017, https://wapo.st/2tQWRZH. 5. Sara Ahmed, “Affective Economies,” Social Text 79 22, no. 2 (June 2004): 118–19. 702 Nina Medvedeva to feel welcomed, respected, and appreciated for who you...