april ☔’s Reviews > Racial Beings: Experiments in Asian American New Materialisms > Status Update
april ☔
is on page 91 of 264
ch 2–“gene”
[that last line of this chapter (“future ‘possibles’”) is such a banger omg]
— Jun 03, 2026 11:06PM
[that last line of this chapter (“future ‘possibles’”) is such a banger omg]
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april ☔’s Previous Updates
april ☔
is on page 158 of 264
ch 4–“species”
[aka the T-O chapter so i obviously loved it. this book has taken me to places i’ve never been before btw (chemistry subreddits).]
— Jun 10, 2026 09:52PM
[aka the T-O chapter so i obviously loved it. this book has taken me to places i’ve never been before btw (chemistry subreddits).]
april ☔
is on page 126 of 264
ch 3–“element”
this chapter was made for me omg (porcelain, water, & phase changes)
— Jun 07, 2026 05:50PM
this chapter was made for me omg (porcelain, water, & phase changes)
april ☔
is on page 55 of 264
chapter 2–“object”:
[really wish someone could invent a way to ctrl+f physical books. index rlly carrying me rn]
— Jun 02, 2026 10:52PM
[really wish someone could invent a way to ctrl+f physical books. index rlly carrying me rn]
april ☔
is on page 24 of 264
ok i’m gonna start summarizing the salient points for myself so i can keep track of the arguments. look away if u don’t want spoilers.
introduction—“human”:
- reading “besides the human”: moving away from scale of individual human subject into nonhuman (vis a vis “inhuman”) scales, esp the smaller/molecular, which reveals heterogeneity and allows for new possibilities.
— Jun 02, 2026 06:46PM
introduction—“human”:
- reading “besides the human”: moving away from scale of individual human subject into nonhuman (vis a vis “inhuman”) scales, esp the smaller/molecular, which reveals heterogeneity and allows for new possibilities.
- clone fictions, in which reproductive processes and the control thereof form the distinction between “human” and “clone,” critique individuality as central to both humanness and narrative
- clonal identity of asian ams deeply tied to racialized reproduction that originated with evacuation + overdetermination (racial fungibility) of Black enslaved women’s bodies. clonal death/labor is required for human lives, but that role is erased.
- reading for “narrative symbiogenesis” (symbiogenesis = new life resulting from symbiosis. aka nonlinear, unintentional, against evolutionary mutation/survival of the fittest). in other words, looking for nonhuman, intersubjectivity/collective embodiment, syncretic origins over a single origin story or individual perspective
- a collective clone/nonhuman consciousness offers possibilities in the face of reproductive control and dehumanization under bio-racial capitalism. in other words, freedom from the individual is a liberatory path when individual freedom is denied