An Infrastructure of Affect: On Coloniality and Displacement in Manchuria

This project explores the coloniality of Manchuria by addressing the affect of displacement on transgenerational human experience. Once a colony of European and Asian powers, Manchuria is located at the junction of multiple nations and states. Since the late 19th century, the idea and partial realisation of a Greater Asia Railroad animated and subjected the region to accelerated interchange and resource extraction.

The Empire of Japan proposed the railway in 1942 as a speculative mega-infrastructure vision, later appropriated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in its 'decolonising' campaign to facilitate anti-Western strategy and neo-colonial expansion into inner Asia and Africa, e.g. incorporating part of the railroad into its present Belt and Road Initiative. The railroad has caused mass geographical dislocation and continues to exacerbate transgenerational trauma, leading me to study how the colonial apparatus (Foucault, 1976) undermines subjectivities in the postcolonial era. 'Manchuria' is a political taboo in China, so its coloniality and transnational complexity cannot be properly discussed, which causes a knowledge gap.

Facing censorship and historical revisionism in the region, this project combines film, publishing and archival practices to re-address the complexities of identity-making in Asia. From my post/colonial lived experience, I will engage with descendants of colonists and colonised, transnational refugees and migrants to facilitate a counter-archive that seeks to understand and challenge a colonial infrastructure of power.