Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

11-2024

Abstract

In this commentary on Elvin Wyly’s ‘Regarding the Pain of (Indigenous) Others’, I comment on the absent ontology of Asian subjectivities in urban studies of neoliberal global cities. Wyly’s account of neoliberal Vancouver hellscapes frames racial formations and narratives of dispossession as formed by capital. Asian subjectivities, I argue in this commentary, are also flattened by narratives of capital into purely economic subjects, but what Wyly’s reading of Vancouver opens up, I also hope to show, is the possibility of tracing the complex life stories of Asian capitalist characters in Vancouver’s neoliberal hellscape. In this way, Wyly avoids the trap of the previous urban studies entries in the post-Chinatown ilk, where global cities are depicted as being shaped by capital with the complexity of Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, but ironically have neither ‘Asian’ nor ‘Chinese’ characters in them that are subjectively complex. Paying attention to complex Asian subjectivities in neoliberal cities allows for further questioning of the relationship between race and capital in contemporary urban studies.

Keywords

neoliberalism, Asian, Vancouver, Chinatown

Discipline

Asian Studies | Sociology | Urban Studies and Planning

Research Areas

Humanities

Publication

Dialogues in Urban Research

Volume

2

Issue

3

First Page

374

Last Page

378

ISSN

2754-1258

Identifier

10.1177/27541258241296111

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1177/27541258241296111

Download

Share

COinS