Coolies and Soldiers: Transpacific Circuits of Labor, Racial Capitalism and Empire

• In Event: Transpacific Studies as Method: Beyond Area Studies and Latinamericanism

Abstract

Following the argument laid out by scholars such as Anibal Quijano and Cedric Robinson, studies on the transatlantic (Africa-Europe-Americas) have called attention to the ways in which capitalism and racialism have been intimately linked in the development of globalization as a sociopolitical, economic and cultural system. The idea of race and the social construction of racial classification -- which in turn created new historical identities (e.g., slave, indentured laborer, immigrant) that became entwined with the division of labor -- legitimated, structured, and produced the nexus of colonialism, imperialism, and global capitalism. In this paper, I propose to trace the trajectory of racial capitalism through the history of transpacific racial forms, such as the coolie and the soldier. I contend that these transpacific figures disturb and suspect the dominant ways in which we understand the nexus of colonialism, imperialism and global capitalism, as well as the episteme of culture, race and economy. The figure of the Chinese and South Asian coolie in Latin America suspects the clear demarcation between slave and free human, while the Latino and Latin American soldier during the Cold War in Asia (e.g., Korean War, Vietnam War) points to the precarious role of colonized subjects tasked with the labor of empire-making. I contend that contrary to dominant discourse the current transpacific turn in Latin America is not a rupture from history or a result of the teleology of progress, but a continuation and refashioning of prior transpacific trajectories.

Author

• Junyoung Verónica Kim, University of Pittsburgh