A Raciosemiotics of Appropriation

Transnational Performance of Raciogender among Mexican K-Pop Fans

Datos Bibliográficos

ID7540732
AutoresJoyhanna Yoo (0000-0002-4857-5693, Harvard University Press, autor de correspondencia)
Año2023
Volumen11
Número1
Páginas68-92
Fecha de publicación2023-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSigns and Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2326-4489 • E-ISSN: 2326-4497
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1086/722810
OpenAlexW4323914508
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas9
Referencias citadas34

Advancing a raciosemiotics (Smalls 2020) of appropriation, this article examines what happens when raciolinguistically charged signs circulate and are taken up in a context different to their production. Based on face-to-face and digital ethnography of K-pop fans in Mexico, this study presents a multimodal semiotic analysis of fans’ metapragmatic discourses and social media practices. I show how fans orient to the female K-pop idol, a mediatized figure of personhood (Agha 2005; Hiramoto and Kang 2017) indexical of hegemonic cosmopolitan femininity but simultaneously an exotic racialized Other in many non-Korean contexts. My examination of fan discourses and performance on social media treats the characterological figure of the female K-pop idol as a desirable, aspirational racial other for Mexican fans, while attending to the sociohistorical specificities of Asian racialization in the context of Mexico. The characterological figure is shaped by, and must interact with, local racial ideologies. My analysis suggests that such performances allow fans to differentiate themselves from other Mexican youth by demonstrating their knowledge of intra-Asian differences. Moreover, they are able to fashion neoliberal and queer subjectivities, albeit conditionally, through their indexical approximation of K-pop idols

Aesthetics · Appropriation · Art · Context (archaeology · Cultural appropriation · Ethnography · Ideology · Indexicality · Linguistics · Political science · Politics · Semiotics · Sociology · Anthropology · Asian Culture and Media Studies · Gender Studies · History · Japanese History and Culture · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy