Chapter 9 - The Asiatic Modal Imagination

Summary

“The Asiatic Modal Imagination” traces the repeated linking of the “Asiatic” with futurity in the Western capitalist imagination. It describes the multiple historical moments where the “Asiatic” is invoked speculatively (from the late nineteenth century to the present) in order to better understand the dual role that Asiatic racialization plays in serving narratives of capital as a driver of universal human history. This racialization occurs via the speculative tropes of a peculiar mixture of genres - world history, political economic tracts, and science fiction. Such discourses and modalities are rampant in the political-economic knowledges produced around the “rise” of China. The chapter unfolds this relationship between Asiatic racialization and future histories of capitalism in the work of Asian American science fiction writers Ted Chiang and Ken Liu. It analyzes these writers for how they interrupt the universalizing narratives of capitalism enabled by speculating on Asia.