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Full text release has been delayed at the author's request until June 15, 2026

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"A Corpus of Corpses: Necrotemporality in Post 9/11 Asian American Literature"

Lyon, Sidne S
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3946-485X
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1624889536362942

Abstract Details

2021, Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, English.
My dissertation addresses the relationship between representations of death and breaks in the flow of linear time in post-9/11 Asian American cultural production to posit a concept of necrotemporality. Necrotemporality attends to how temporal breaks in works of fiction connect past mechanisms of necropolitical violence against Asian Americans with modern expressions of the same racialized system of power. I argue that the temporal breaks that the dead manifest in Asian American fiction draw attention to sites of repetitive death-making that have been purposefully obscured for the political and economic benefit of the racial capitalist state. Framing my discussion through transpacific critique and biopolitical and necropolitical critique in critical race studies, I consider how the literary relationship between death and nonlinear time reveals how racializing socio-political structures and exclusions have been used in different forms throughout US history to legitimate the right to kill and covertly enact violence on Asian Americans. Forging these connections through the dead uncovers what has yet to be reconciled by the state; what mechanisms of death have been re-used to justify and enact exclusion, imprisonment, and imperial expansion across the Pacific; and the critical links among power, life, and death in the governance of Asian Americans. I examine how the link between temporal breaks and death and death-making conditions in Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You, Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being, Larissa Lai';s Salt Fish Girl, and HBO's Westworld allow for past, present and future forms of obscured racial violence to be put into conversation with one another. The collision of these racialized death-making mechanisms emphasizes the longevity of the political and capitalist motivations behind the destruction and death of Asian Americans. Centering my analysis on the necropolitics of racial exclusion, otherization, homogenization, normalization of racism, erasure of US imperialism/settler colonialism, and individual expressions of necropower, I suggest that the temporal disturbances created by the dead reveal how the necropolitical past is alive in the current US socio-political moment. I conclude with a discussion on the necropolitics of mortality data by analyzing Asian American death certificates within their historical and cultural contexts.
Anita Mannur (Advisor)
Erin Edwards (Committee Member)
Katie Johnson (Committee Member)
Yu-Fang Cho (Committee Member)
Jonathan Strauss (Committee Member)
222 p.
Asian American Studies; Ethnic Studies; Film Studies; Literature

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Lyon, S. S. (2021). "A Corpus of Corpses: Necrotemporality in Post 9/11 Asian American Literature" [Doctoral dissertation, Miami University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1624889536362942

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Lyon, Sidne. "A Corpus of Corpses: Necrotemporality in Post 9/11 Asian American Literature". 2021. Miami University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1624889536362942.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Lyon, Sidne. ""A Corpus of Corpses: Necrotemporality in Post 9/11 Asian American Literature"." Doctoral dissertation, Miami University, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1624889536362942

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by Miami University and OhioLINK.