Racist Intimacies; or, The Femme Alter Ego and Her Retribution

Abstract

Cultural depictions of Asian/white miscegenation have long been a source of fascination for scholars within Asian American and sexuality studies. Such a long-standing interest has not only provided key insights into the Orientalist structure of racialized sexuality, but it has also kept our sights set, perhaps too set, on deciphering the Asian woman both in the context of romance and as an object of desire. This essay recasts the narrative of Asian/white sexuality as one of minoritarian retribution, making the argument that insofar as Asian femininity forms the object of racist desires, it can also function as the basis for feminist revenge. The author contemplates racial fetishism through twenty-first-century feminist cultural production, namely the work of mixed-race artists Chanel Matsunami Govreau and Maya Mackrandilal, showing how neoliberal multiculturalism has become further embedded within the infrastructure of everyday encounters, giving rise to something we might call the erotic life of anti-racism.