Paper Performance: Suspicion and Asian American Archives

Since the late nineteenth century, various agencies of the U.S. government have developed elaborate bureaucratic procedures to manage "suspect" Asian groups. Ju Yon Kim explores the modes of engagement and contestation available to those who are subjected by the state to both relentless documentation and demands to perform—whether as lawful immigrants, obedient colonial subjects, or loyal Americans. Even as paper documentation has been critical to authorizing exclusion, surveillance, and in...