Race Conditions

Abstract A technical phenomenon in programming and electronic circuitry serves as an explanatory image for certain aesthetic and affective phenomena in literary representation. A race condition arises in an electronic circuit when signals from different sources compete or race against one another, often leading to ambiguous effects within the circuit or machine. This image here represents competing signals about racial and national belonging in literary works. As these signals compete with one another, race conditions arise as forms of political ambivalence and an aesthetics of incompleteness or absence. Two sections illustrate this critical framing by analyzing Miné Okubo’s 1946 graphic memoir Citizen 13660. The third section considers race conditions in two contemporary novels, and the final section reflects on the political sensibilities that emerge when information technology becomes a structuring metaphor within literary depictions of collective belonging and racial identity.