By Steven Beardsley
I chose to read a poetry collection (Automaton Biographies) by Larissa Lai that I’m planning to teach in my Technofeminist Literature and AI class in the spring as well as some chapters from mimi khuc’s dear elia. I found that while I read Automaton Biographies there was a lot of filtering in my mind of all the “noise” going on at Bucknell and in the country regarding AI and the Trump administration’s policies on immigration, trade, etc. Lai’s poetry really pushed back on all of that from an Asian American technofemme perspective, but the sections from dear elia also had me reflecting on how the university participates in unwellness that targets our students and us as faculty and staff. I really resonated with khuc’s critique of the tenure track vs. contingent faculty divide and how much of what we’re taught in grad school from the Professor Is In and other workshops on how to be successful and land the tenure-track job is based on individualist meritocracy and on ableist racism (i.e. the idea that you should write every day if you want to be “successful” in academic life). I wanted to share this line in particular that I think all faculty including students and staff and community members should be aware of: “We live and work in a machine that makes us unwell while not allowing us to be unwell and punishes us for being unwell and asks us to punish others for being unwell so that we can prove we are well” (92). So in reading both the poetry that also critiques the automation and alienation of Asian American labor and khuc’s critique of the university’s complicit enabling of unwellness I’ve found myself feeling not only vindicated in my current unwellness but also thinking about what it truly means to share this unwellness with colleagues and individuals who remain complicit to this unwellness whether subconsciously or consciously.
Title: Larissa Lai's Automaton Biographies and Chapter 2 (and part of chapter 4) of mimi khuc's dear elia: letters from the Asian American Abyss
Hours read: 4 hours