Affect and the (Un)Doing of Trust in 20th and21st Century Black and Asian American Fiction and Nonfiction

This contribution reconsiders the relation between marginalized communities and the hegemonic U.S. American nation through a focus on crisis and an affective perspective on trust. I propose that mutual distrust between the nation and its citizens is a structural affective component of America’s »cultural politics of emotion« (Ahmed 2004) that (re)surfaces particularly in moments of crisis. Against this backdrop, I examine how Black Americans and Asian-Americans have expressed their fundamental distrust in the promises of the American nation, and thus challenge, subvert, and even disengage from »cruel optimism« and the fantasy of »the good life« (Berlant 2011). In five case studies – ranging from Nina Simone’s »Mississippi Goddam«, to excerpts from James Baldwin’s and Audre Lorde’s talks and nonfiction, to John Okada’s No-No Boy and Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings – I will show that these expressions not only illustrate how the (un)doing of trust shapes the racialized experiences of living in the affective economy of the United States by delineating the coordinates of belonging in and to the nation, but also how strategic distrust can be used as a form of empowerment and resistance.