Topologies of Subjectivation: Epistemic, Temporal, and Political Foldings of Migrant Becoming

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 7:45 am - Gold 3
  In Roundtable Session: Affect, Embodiment, and Art in Education

Abstract

This study integrates Deleuze’s ontology with Foucault’s late work on ethics to explore the micro-political formation of migrant subjectivities within institutional regimes of power and knowledge. Through a genealogical approach, it examines how the Museum of Chinese in America’s exhibition Fold: Golden Venture Paper Sculptures re-articulates a 1993 migration crisis through oral histories and curatorial display. By traversing the Golden Venture case across three temporal strata—1993, 2017, and the present—the research interrogates how the subjectivities of detained Chinese migrants are continuously folded and refolded through intersecting legal, political, and affective forces. It offers a topological framework that expands historical studies of migration and the politics of subjectivation.

Author

• William Zhou, The George Washington University