UC San Diego

I trace the changing animal stereotypes imposed on Asian Americans and Asian immigrants throughout the history. I coin the term, racial atavism, to characterize the paradoxical temporality of Asian Americans who progress toward the model minority status while simultaneously reassume degraded animal stereotypes from the past. Acknowledging the anthropocentric and racist connotations embedded in this paradox, I call for an interspecies and interracial love as a remedy. I start with the misperception of Asian Americans and the resulting animal stereotypes imposed on them by the mainstream society. Yet I do not end with a cynical critique of the anthropocentric and racist status-quo. I contribute to the field of Asian American studies by introducing a possibility of interspecies and interracial love born out of misperception through Jakob von Uexkull’s elaboration on the “umwelt.” Defined as how different species perceive the world through their subjective sensory organs, “umwelt” not only deconstructs the domination of human/white perception but also provides a theoretical framework to envision companionship and coevolution through mutual misperception. I explore the minute tension and intimacy between Asian Americans/immigrants and people of various racial identities. Ranked according to a racial hierarchy which is modeled after the species hierarchy in Social Darwinism, Asian Americans find themselves occupying the liminal positions of pet animals who are essentially castrated in the name of being privileged as a family member in a human household /the model minority in a white dominated U.S. society. I deem the liminal status assigned to Asian Americans as a pivotal one through which people hierarchically ranked at different levels/evolution stages can find pathways to free their animal selves from the prison of humanization. I do not call for a naïve embrace of animals which is merely another kind of fantasy reinforcing the animal-human/white-color binaries. I interpret the Asian American protagonists and artists I analyzed as animal humans who fluctuate between castrated/subjugated model minority citizens and killable alien animals. From hate crimes to interracial queer love, I demonstrate that those who survive and thrive are precisely those caught between the species/racial lines and coevolving with the animal others beside and within themselves.