Research Focus Group Talk: Beyond the “New Cold War”: Intimating Movements across Taiwan and Asian/Pacific/America

Taiwan has long held a pivotal—if “strategically ambiguous”—position in inter-imperial tensions over global influence and has in recent decades been frequently used to refurbish debates over a “new Cold War.” Situated at the nexus of inter-imperial entanglements, settler-colonial formations, and migrant labor networks, Taiwan’s perpetually unresolved status is, Wong argues, pivotal not only for the geopolitics of empire but more importantly for its place in trans-geographical alliance building for those who have long survived, navigated, and challenged these imperial binds—e.g., Indigenous coalitions, informal economy workers, militaristically displaced refugees. In this talk, Wong discusses the ongoing work of grassroot organizations that have built transpacific networks—through conferences, community-driven research, and cultural productions—across Taiwan, the Philippines, North America, and the Pacific. Examining these convergences complicates narrow definitions of both “anti-Asian hate” and “new Cold War” discourses simultaneously, as such narratives often obscure the many coalitional openings—”the linked, if uneven intimacies,” citing Lisa Lowe—that have always already been in formation.

Lily Wong is an Associate Professor of Literature and Critical Race Gender & Culture Studies at American University. She also serves as an Associate Director of AU’s Antiracist Research and Policy Center. Her research focuses on the politics of affective labor, racial capitalism, and transpacific coalitional movements.

Cosponsored by the IHC’s Interdisciplinary Sinophone Studies Research Focus Group, UCSB’s Center for Taiwan Studies, and UCSB’s Department of Asian American Studies