Model Minority Melancholia: Mourning and Resisting Anti-Asian Violence

Abstract

ABSTRACT Anti-Asian violence is a regular part of US history, but surged during the Covid-19 pandemic because of the virus’s association with China, and then-US President Trump’s use of racist rhetoric to name the virus and its resulting spread. In response and in resistance to these acts of violence, protests and educational efforts increased as well, rooted in the grief and mourning spurred by the attacks. This essay examines these affects as symptoms of a racialized melancholia that is part of US political enactments of national belonging. This melancholia is related to the model minority identity, which is organized around a spiritualized ideal of assimilation that mystifies the causes of anti-Asian violence and its function in cohering US national identity as a settler-colonial state. Rather than a pathology to overcome, interrogating model minority melancholia may expose a different foundation for imagining national belonging that doesn’t rely on anti-Asian violence.