Model Machines (Hardcover)

Long T. Bui

ISBN 10: 1439922330 / ISBN 13: 9781439922330

Published by Temple University Press,U.S., Philadelphia PA, 2022

About this Item

Hardcover. In the contemporary Western imagination, Asian people are frequently described as automatons, which disavows their humanity. In Model Machines, Long Bui investigates what he calls Asian roboticism or the ways Asians embody the machine and are given robotic characteristics. Bui offers the first historical overview of the overlapping racialization of Asians and Asian Americans through their conflation with the robot-machine nexus. He puts forth the concept of the model machine myth, which holds specific queries about personhood, citizenship, labor, and rights in the transnational making of Asian/America. The case studies in Model Machines chart the representation of Chinese laborers, Japanese soldiers, Asian sex workers, and other examples to show how Asians are reimagined to be model machines as a product of globalization, racism, and colonialism. Moreover, it offers examples of how artists and everyday people resisted that stereotype to consider different ways of being human. Starting from the early nineteenth century, the book ends in the present with the new millennium, where the resurgence of China presages the rise of the machines and all the doomsday scenarios this might spell for global humanity at large. "A study of the stereotype and representation of Asians as robotic machines through history"-- Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781439922330

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Model Machines (Hardcover)
• Publisher: Temple University Press,U.S., Philadelphia PA
• Publication Date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1439922330
• ISBN 13: 9781439922330
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

In the contemporary Western imagination, Asian people are frequently described as automatons, which disavows their humanity. In Model Machines, Long Bui investigates what he calls Asian roboticism or the ways Asians embody the machine and are given robotic characteristics.

Bui offers the first historical overview of the overlapping racialization of Asians and Asian Americans through their conflation with the robot-machine nexus. He puts forth the concept of the “model machine myth,” which holds specific queries about personhood, citizenship, labor, and rights in the transnational making of Asian/America.

The case studies in Model Machines chart the representation of Chinese laborers, Japanese soldiers, Asian sex workers, and other examples to show how Asians are reimagined to be model machines as a product of globalization, racism, and colonialism. Moreover, it offers examples of how artists and everyday people resisted that stereotype to consider different ways of being human. Starting from the early nineteenth century, the book ends in the present with the new millennium, where the resurgence of China presages the “rise of the machines” and all the doomsday scenarios this might spell for global humanity at large.

About the Author

Long T. Bui is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Irvine and the author of Returns of War: South Vietnam and the Price of Refugee Memory.