banger essay https://ismatu.substack.com/p/girl-go-to-sleep-ft-lessons-from

Also relating to the comment below my multitotal and your response, i agree with multitotal that it’s a bit of a romanticization but also i think this can viewed as a negation of the negation. Negation of the primitive structure and the modern alienated structures for a synthesis into hopefully a better society.

That felt a bit incoherent but i’m too lazy to reword that so hopefully it’s at least somewhat understandable.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311811471_An_Introduction_to_Generative_Justice

I was reading this paper a while ago and this is Marx’s theory of alienation. When we are so alienated from the products of our labor it seems to pointless often.

The paper talks about how even under socialist economies labor is alienated to be redistributed by the state. An improvement on capitalism, but nonetheless alienated

Another way capitalism alienates us, while not directly marx’s analysis on labor, is from community. It’s so hard to have community under capitalism.

I have also had the chance to meet a pre-new china member of the cpc. He was my grandpa actually. Unfortunately he died a couple years ago and the last time I was back in china I didn’t know what a marx was…

I wish you the best of experiences though.

I personally really like to journal but even if you don't I like to prepare for interview by writing down like what i would answer to the questions. Then in the case of an interview I kinda already know where I want to go so i can focus on making myself more articulate and prose more interesting. Of course you won't cover everything you will get asked and will still need to impromptu some questions but i find i feel a lot more prepared and that helps with my anxiety.

My sister does a lot of this stuff - I'll pull up some resources tomorrow, remind me if i forget. I was at their club meeting where we went over this exact stuff.

What comes to mind that i've read super recently is Glitch Feminism by Legacy Russell. I'll throw in a quote here and would recommend - though not super sure it would be super applicable to your paper so i'll go find some actual resources tomorrow.

Here's a quote from the book that summarizes it, but i'll update this tomorrow(it's like 2 am rn)

The construct of gender binary is, and has always been, precarious. Aggressively contingent, it is an immaterial invention that in its toxic virality has infected our social and cultural narratives. To exist within a binary system one must assume that our selves are unchangeable, that how we are read in the world must be chosen for us, rather than for us to define—and choose—for ourselves. To be at the intersection of female-identifying, queer, and Black is to find oneself at an integral apex. Each of these components is a key technology in and of itself. Alone and together, “female,” “queer,” “Black” as a survival strategy demand the creation of their individual machinery, that innovates, builds, resists. With physical movement often restricted, female-identifying people, queer people, Black people invent ways to create space through rupture. Here, in that disruption, with our collective congregation at that trippy and trip-wired crossroad of gender, race, and sexuality, one finds the power of the glitch.

“We use “body” to give material form to an idea that has no form, an assemblage that is abstract. The concept of a body houses within it social, political, and cultural discourses, which change based on where the body is situated and how it is read. When we gender a body, we are making assumptions about the body’s function, its sociopolitical condition, its fixity. When the body is determined as a male or female individual, the body performs gender as its score, guided by a set of rules and requirements that validate and verify the humanity of that individual. A body that pushes back at the application of pronouns, or remains indecipherable within binary assignment, is a body that refuses to perform the score. This nonperformance is a glitch. This glitch is a form of refusal.”

“Within glitch feminism, glitch is celebrated as a vehicle of refusal, a strategy of nonperformance. This glitch aims to make abstract again that which has been forced into an uncomfortable and ill-defined material: the body. In glitch feminism, we look at the notion of glitch-as-error with its genesis in the realm of the machinic and the digital and consider how it can be reapplied to inform the way we see the AFK world, shaping how we might participate in it toward greater agency for and by ourselves. Deploying the Internet as a creative material, glitch feminism looks first through the lens of artists who, in their work and research, offer solutions to this troubled material of the body. The process of becoming material surfaces tensions, prompting us to inquire: Who defines the material of the body? Who gives it value—and why?

others have said a lot, but i just wanted to add

I’ve tried talking to a therapist about it but they just suggested that I try to stop identifying as Chinese and start identifying as American.

is ridiculous to the point of satire. It feels like something someone would satirically say rather than unironic advice from a therapist.

I haven't finished it, but probably the Karl Marx one(though it is a donghua, not an anime)

but at what cost

Hmm for me a pretty recent 180 i took was on Deng Xiaoping. I was a commie but I really wasn't super educated on the state of AES(even though i am part of the chinese diaspora) and was always under the impression that it was capitalism. That deng xiaoping turned china capitalist. Probably not really as big of an 180 as some other people here but really learning about china was really inspiring and restored my hope in the world ig. I feel way more patriotic towards china right than amerikkka.

Thinking of possibly doing my master's in china after my undergrad.

thanks! Another reason to finally get around to reading imperialism i guess. Been meaning to for a while.

Can you expand on this? I haven't read too much theory so i'm guessing this is something in capital?