Many-faced orientalism: racism and xenophobia in a time of the novel coronavirus in Chile

Abstract

ABSTRACT Ethnic Chinese and Asians have historically been excluded, invisibilized, or experienced conditional inclusion in South America. In Chile, the global pandemic provoked an increase in older patterns of anti-Chinese racism and anti-China sentiments. Orientalist and racist discourses have gone uncriticized, although anti-China statements by politicians and academics have provoked diplomatic backlash. Contextualizing the history of orientalism and representations of Chineseness in Chile, we show that dominant political and cultural discourses during COVID-19 strongly reproduce the dichotomy between the ‘Oriental’ and ‘Occidental.’ The pandemic reveals the superficial and problematic nature of the government’s recent attempts to articulate multiculturalism in an era of ‘rise in China’ tropes.