The Ubiquity of Asia: Cai Guo-Qiang's Fireworks and Spectral Marxism

Abstract

Asia is everywhere. Asia feels ubiquitous, from soft to hard power; from high to low culture; and from the Americas to Africa. In the American cycle of capital accumulation, under Giovanni Arrighi's schema, the overrepresentation of the United States was marked through representation-based and symbolic notions like Disneyfication (Jean Baudrillard) and “the ascendancy of whiteness” (Rey Chow). Under our contemporary Asian cycle of capital accumulation, this geographic area's affective ubiquity appears much like that of the US by saturating global public sentiment. However, considering that Asia's ubiquity emerges across sites like China, South Korea, India, and Japan, among others, what might we use to capture this sense of affective intensity and spread beyond representation-based frames? More specifically, how do we contend with geographic space within racial capital today, and how might we update our models for understanding race and capital so as to fully grapple with this transitional moment from American empire to Global Asia? Under the American cycle, representational frames like Orientalism and white supremacy emerged to understand Asian racialization. Can these frames still help explain the ubiquity of Asia today? This essay explores how we might discuss the subject beyond representation and in light of the ubiquity of Asia and what methods we deploy for Marxist analysis. This essay focuses less on Asian bodies and Asian spaces and turns toward aesthetic objects and practices that engage the affective sublime. More specifically, it examines the aesthetics of fireworks for what they might offer as a lexicon to contend with the transition in cycles of capital accumulation and changes in our ideas of space and race. The article thus turns to the artist Cai Guo-Qiang for insight on the subject amid contemporary racial capital and the methods available for critique.