Machine Dreams (Race, Robots, and the Asian American Body)

In Machine Dreams, Margaret Rhee shows how the entanglement of Asian Americans and technology is embedded within the history of colonization, labor, and trade between East and West through the figure of the robot. Uncovering the complex underpinnings shared between race and robotics, Rhee bridges creative and scholarly writing to consider how processes of racial formation are imbricated with technology through a dialectical and discursive lens. Drawing on extensive archival research and media analysis, she examines the emerging technologies of Asian migrants, the dehumanization fueled by the machine-analogous "model minority" stereotype, the racialization of robots and automatons, and the role of gender in technologies of racialization. Together, these themes highlight the entanglements among Asian Americans, labor, and robots from the seventeenth century to the present AI age. Machine Dreams is an intersectional analysis of how robotization is wielded to make racialized individuals become targets of state-sanctioned violence and cultural hegemony, as well as a beacon for how both robots and Asian Americans can be rehumanized.