Description
Book SynopsisAimee Bahng traces the cultural production of futurity by juxtaposing the practices of speculative finance against those of speculative fiction, showing how speculative novels, films, and narratives create alternative futures that envision the potential for new political economies, social structures, and subjectivities that exceed the framework of capitalism.
Trade Review"Compelling and unique . . . Aimee Bahng's skillfully made point: that the emerging field of critical finance studies, paired with feminist science studies, can help to reconfigure not only literary criticism but also Americanist, anti-/decolonial scholarship, queer theory, and science fiction studies.
Migrant Futures truly sits at the edges of disciplines and casts its illuminating light over all of them." -- Sean Guynes * ASAP/Journal *
"In her readings of various Asian and Asian American texts and experiences, Aimee Bahng makes a significant intervention into Asian futurism. Instead of struggling to identify a specific Asianness in futurity, Bahng’s work attempts to connect Asian futurism with other neocolonial, postcolonial, and imperial experiences." -- Eunice Sang Eun Lee * Situations *
"The ideas in
Migrant Futures are big, novel, and fantastic. But more than that, the structure itself is an act of academic decolonization and speculation." -- Joshua Earle * Catalyst *
"Illuminating. . . . Aimee Bahng’s ambitious book contributes to the nascent but growing field of critical finance studies, as well as to the more established tradition of scholarship on racial capitalism." -- Gabriella Friedman * American Quarterly *
"Rarely does an academic monograph leave its readers feeling buoyant, but
Migrant Futures succeeds at doing just that. Bahng’s stellar book demonstrates that doomsday prophecies about capitalism’s all-encompassing power come to their pessimistic conclusions by way of an atrophied cultural canon." -- Christine Okoth * Journal of American Studies *
"Aimee Bahng’s
Migrant Futures offers a bold intervention into the future: both in the sense that it charts new ground for speculative thinking about the landscape of futurity as well as its stunning capacity to reshape the future of Asian American and ethnic studies." -- Keva X. Bui * Journal of Asian American Studies *
Table of ContentsPreface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction. On Speculation: Fiction, Finance, and Futurity 1
1. Imperial Rubber: The Speculative Arcs of Karen Tei Yamashita's Rainforest Futures 25
2. Homeland Futurity: Speculations at the Border 51
3. Speculation and the Speculum: Surrogations of Futurity 79
4. The Cruel Optimism of the Asian Century 119
5. Salt Fish Futures: The Irradiated Transpacific and the Financialization of the Human Genome Project 146
Epilogue. Speculation as Discourse, Speculation as Exuberance 168
Notes 171
Bibliography 201
Index 217
