Skin as Technology in Asian/America

“Skin” has multiple and fraught meanings in Asian America. Asian skin tones are ambiguous, variously labeled as yellow, brown, or white-ish. Colorism and the stigma of darker skin are frequently raised as evidence of Asian anti-Blackness, and a preference for skin whitening likewise interpreted as imitating whiteness. As scholars like Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu, S. Heijin Lee, and Natalia Duong have pointed out, Asian skin is a porous site where racial, national, gendered, and aesthetic meanings collide, and where the legacies of war, imperialism, and neoliberalization are written on the body. 

Alongside cosmetic surgery, self-care and beauty trends, skin can also be understood as a kind of technology. We can “reskin” ourselves online by choosing from a nearly endless color palette for our virtual avatars. Military technology aims at constructing body armor that is essentially a “second skin.” Pharmaceutical companies promise to create a kind of barrier that protects skin itself from the harms of life, to, in short, use “bioactive” technology to reverse natural processes like aging. Scholars in this conversation will discuss the ways in which attention to skin as a technology (e.g. as virtual costume in digital spaces, as environmental interface, military armor, etc.) can accordingly nuance our understandings of race, nationality, class, and aesthetics in Asian/America.

This virtual discussion, curated and moderated by Professor Tara Fickle (Northwestern University), features Professors Michelle Huang (Northwestern University), Miliann Kang (University of Massachusetts, Amherst ), and Sunny Xiang (Yale University).