Subjectification and the Archaeology of Violence: The 19th century Anti-Chinese Movement in San Jose, California

Summary

Communal violence is often central to subjectification and the process of creating and sustaining social difference. Preliminary results of archival studies and archaeological research trace the relationship between violence and subject formation among participants of the anti-Chinese movement in 19th century San Jose, which enacted campaigns of harassment and direct violence against Chinese immigrant and Chinese American residents of the city. What material practices and social performances transform neighbors into enemies? What rhetorics and materialities legitimize and rationalize the use of force? What archaeological traces can aid in reconstructing victims’ responses and persistence in the midst of routinized violence? Overall, this investigation seeks to forge connections between anthropological theories of communal violence and what Paul Mullins has termed the "archaeology of the color line" in North America.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Archaeological Approaches to Subjectification

Keywords

Spatial Coverage