Ethnic Platforms and the Failure of Techno-Futurity

Bibliographic Data

ID12469741
AuthorsLinh Nguyen (0000-0001-8145-4407, corresponding author), Lilly U Nguyen
Year2017
Volume20
Issue1
Pages51-68
Publication date2017-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Asian American Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1096-8598 • E-ISSN: 1097-2129
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/jaas.2017.0004
OpenAlexW2585988904
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited18

This article analyzes a novel yet fleeting configuration of ethnicity, the ethnic platform. Through ethnographic fieldwork of a diasporic Vietnamese entrepreneurial organization, this article explains why this attempt to create economic potential through Vietnamese ethnicity eventually failed. The ethnic platform was organized around two regimes of futurity. On the one hand, the ethnic platform was founded on a hope for a transcendent Vietnamese ethnicity that organized future as potential and forward momentum. This future potential, however, stood at odds with the future present of a refugee subjectivity that shaped the ethnic formation of many of these diasporic entrepreneurs. Hence, the ethnic platform was situated at the disjuncture between incommensurate ethnic temporalities. Despite the ethnic platform’s short-lived existence, this article underscores the importance of failure as an ethno-temporal critique through which we come to see the struggles and limits of techno-capitalism

Capitalism · Ethnic group · Ethnography · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Subjectivity · Vietnamese · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Gender Studies · Law · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy

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