With Oarfish, a writer I respect and admire enormously, we discussed contradiction, art school, refusing to be complicit in institutional violence, what ‘ESEA’ is supposed to mean, white anarchists, writing, weakness and bravery and guilt, and so much else that did not end up in this write-up because it was largely gossip. Can you believe this interview was 3 hours long? Here is some of what we said. Thank you so much, Oarfish, for your voice, your kindness, and your inspiration!
If you’re reading this in newsletter format, click here for the properly formatted version: https://jiaqikang.mataroa.blog/blog/questions-for-my-friends-6-oarfish
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The idea for this project is that I’m interviewing my friends and people I feel close to, who inspire me. There’s obviously a difference between this ‘on the record’ discussion, which will be published online for anyone to read, and the normal ‘off the record’ conversations we’d have as friends. I’m interested in the ways I might get to know you more through this slightly more ‘formal’ format and the choices you make in representing yourself. I’m also interested in oral history as a form, and in ways to preserve and archive intimacies and relationships in time and space.
Please come up with how you want to be called: name, initial, or pseudonym. I’ll be “Jiaqi Kang.”
The questions below are the 6 main questions I’ll ask you, but your answers will probably prompt some follow-up questions. Your answers can be as long or short as you want. The interview will be conducted orally, then transcribed using Loom and edited for length and clarity. You’ll get to take a final look at it before it goes up, and of course I can take it down anytime you like in the future (although it’s on my blog+newsletter which means that it will also exist in people’s email inboxes).
1. Please introduce yourself and your background, in any way you’d like.
2. How did you become politically engaged?
3. How did you and I meet?
4. What does the word ‘care’ mean for you?
5. What are some things you’re currently looking to learn, or learn about?
6. Is there anything else you’d like to say, or to ask me?
Thank you <3
With thanks to CM for helping me plug the audio files into Loom!
This interview was conducted virtually in May 2025 and has been edited for length and clarity.
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Jiaqi Kang: Is there anything you would like to say before we begin?
Oarfish: I want to say that I'm happy to be talking to my friend, and that I saw a magpie hopping through the grass this morning and I felt blessed.
JK: Would you like to introduce yourself and your background in any way you'd like?
O: I'm Oarfish. My more public identity is tied to being primarily a writer, I guess some kind of cultural critic, sometimes a visual artist, sort of floating in and around abolitionist, East and Southeast Asian spaces. Basically [I am] various types of hater.
JK: You're also a very informed hater, which is very important and rare.
O: Thank you.
JK: How did you become politically engaged?
O: I was a very horny child. It was this very strange combination of feeling like I had a lot of autonomy, but simultaneously I was repressed by reactionary parents. I had a lot of ideas about what a child ‘born as a girl’ should do and not [do], especially around sex. I was groomed by an older boy. I was terrified of getting pregnant. When I wasn't in some kind of bedroom situation, I was at school or I was online. It was 2000s feminist internet forums and websites about sexual health that really got me thinking about, “What is bodily autonomy?” By learning about the pro-choice movement and trying to sort through all of these bodily sensations and think about how I wanted to be recognized.
But I'd say my politics never really progressed beyond being a liberal, which sounds weird to say because I started thinking about and experiencing these things before I was a teenager. In some ways I was precocious, but also, it's taken a really long time to arrive at my current politics. I feel very self-conscious when I hear about people who have basically not had a choice but to become really highly politically educated since the earliest days of their conscious thought.
I felt less ashamed of my political engagement, post-2016. Unfortunately this meant I was part of ‘stop Trump’ rallies, which makes me cringe when I think about it. I started volunteering with The Outside Project, which had a local hub. It was a community hub for any queer person—but it was set up to cover the [period of] time before the night shelters would open, so it was actually really geared towards people who were struggling with homelessness.
Around that time, my parents’ housekeeping situation collapsed. I grew up as a child of live-in housekeepers. My parents were part of this failed intelligentsia who had arrived in the UK to fulfill ideas about nation-building and art through painting murals in a temple, and then they [were] met with the reality of a Thatcherite England that really only desired [them to do] the work that most working class Thai migrants do, which is hospitality work and domestic work.
I began thinking about what a strange situation that was to grow up in—I lacked the language to even begin discussing this. The radical liberal kind of 2010s Tumblr-ised micro-aggression blog identity politics I got at university just did not have space to hold anything resembling a contradiction. But a contradiction is one of the key things that you actually have to apprehend when you're looking at more materialist politics. I was thinking about the lack of agency that we had in this situation [as live-in housekeepers].
I think [that period of time] coincided with the disastrous 2019 Labour election [result] as well. It made me question a lot of things about what we expect of our institutions and [about] electoralism. “What are we doing to actually put roofs over people's heads?” I was noting the difference—and the similarities—between people who came to use the community center and the experiences I had. But I also knew it wasn't appropriate to be like, “Hey, me too,” because it's not the same.
It was a lot of internal work, basically. I thought about how strange it was to grow up on a private road with a massive garden, and yet the constant awareness that our landlord/employer was really obsessed with Thailand, and really specifically wanted a Thai family to look after him. He actively desired that beyond everything else. It was strange to hear him talk about us, because one minute he was my uncle or my grandfather—but then, if he wanted to impress people, he would immediately start talking about “the housekeeper” or “the housekeeper's family.” Ultimately, he stole decades-worth of my parents' wages, which they will never recover.
Our working conditions were [verbally agreed upon, rather than written]. It was just the way things were. Like, if my mum was ill and my dad was at the restaurant doing actually paid work, I would be doing the tasks, the light chores. I was uncomfortable, but I didn't think, “Hmm, I'm a servant,” or anything like that. Now that I've gained a bit more language to talk about growing up in that situation, when I talk to people about it, they're usually like, “What you’re describing is slavery,” but I'm like, “Hmmm.” I think it was exploitative and a very constrained situation, but we still had considerably more freedom than people subject to modern enslavement. We had all our documents, we could pretend we were middle class and living with a helpful white uncle, as the threats were manageable for us at an emotional and financial level, rather than the exceptional physical violence, verbal abuse, starvation, and deprivation of healthcare we find in modern enslavement. Furthermore, the thing we call modern slavery—as defined in law and [that definitionally] has certain mechanisms surrounding it—[the terminology] is problematic and, in many ways, absolves the various countries involved of any responsibility for the economic reality that results in this exploited labour.
I started to really understand the situation through abolition; abolitionist politics that pay close attention to types of labour and groups of people that are usually dismissed as not viable political subjects—especially [from] my friend who organizes with Filipino domestic workers. This is a self-organised labour force that understands the importance of political education and fighting back collectively. Their situations are often described… I don't know what the correct kind of verb is, but basically when these workers try to seek any form of redress, it is often through mechanisms associated with ‘modern slavery,’ with ‘trafficking.’ I learned through abolitionist friends who work in the migrant sector that you often have to carefully navigate the constraints of these frameworks, and that ultimately your political goal should be turned towards abolishing the necessity of your own job, rather than politely asking the state for concessions on inherently violent things like borders.
I can see how there are some commonalities between the situation of my parents and the situation of Filipino migrant workers generally. When you are looking at the general struggle of Filipino workers, it takes place in the context of Marcos-era laws created in a nation state structured by centuries of imperialism by Spain and the U.S. These labour laws promoted an export economy so that the whole world benefits from the exploitation of these workers. Overseas contract workers are supported and encouraged so [the] remittance economy [can thrive.] I grew up knowing about the remittance economy in Thailand, but I don't know that it is enshrined at the same level [as in the Philippines]. Labour migration out of the purposefully impoverished Northeastern Lao-speaking region of Thailand meant my grandparents arrived in Bangkok for survival, and then my parents left for the UK in the 80's, this time with aspirations. For my family's situation, we always had regularised status [in the UK]. We could have left that household at any time. In contrast, what constrains a lot of Filipino workers is that due to the UK's border regime constantly ramping up control of migrants, their visas are tied to their abusive employers. And there's agency fees involved as well, so debt effectively makes them indentured servants. This was not the case with my parents. There were personal debts and other financial constraints; I don't think they would [have been] able to pay market rent rates and also remit to our families in the way that our financially abusive families really wanted...
Where was I going with this thread?
JK: You were talking about how this stuff started happening around 2019 and it was part of what made your world feel bigger or the struggles feel more connected between you personally and others. Then you said that you were thinking of the language of abolition.
O: Thank you, yes. So that made me break more forcefully my emotional tie to the identity reductionism that had been instilled in me from my formative years, and to be more present with what's happening now—what was happening with my parents and what I could do to actually support people immediately around me.
My parents' situation was eventually resolved. They received some financial redress from their former employer, but nowhere near enough to cover years of wage theft. Going back to the failed intelligentsia thing, [my parents] thought one of the best things they could do with this money was to send me to art school. It’s this family [story] repeating itself again and again: my parents [had] entered the Thai intelligentsia during the 70s, 80s period of intense national regeneration. In that context, [the people at art school] were mostly working class people from northeast Thailand, the exact same class of people that eventually [made their] way overseas. It’s a core/periphery thing—art school offered a way for social mobility to be possible. Not like art school now, which is just a playground for the ruling class; just somewhere for rich people to self-actualise. And dear god, it’s so boring, mostly! [When I went to art school] there was this awareness that I had to break down what I wanted out of art, because I still couldn't break away from this feeling [my parents had instilled in me] that, “I'm really meant to do art, I'm really meant to have more of an education.” There's still that aspirational thing.
So yeah, I put on the biggest clown shoes ever and walked straight into art school, and what I experienced was this… One of your friends in a previous interview describes child debating as “a worsening of the human person.” I really relate to that as I finished my MA last year. I've witnessed many, many, many institutional failures, just a complete failure to engage with the broader world beyond the art studio. It’s completely out of touch, and it was just so bad that I had to really reckon with the fact that I had been duped. I felt really stupid, you know? I was like, “How could I have let myself do this? Why am I still here? What is going on?”
It got to the point where, on my MA, post-2023, several of my classmates were actively making Zionist art. So I was like, “Okay, I'm going to tell my tutor that I'm going to make art about the sort of double bind that exported laborers from the Northeast Thailand region experienced when we were often exported to the empire and its outposts, such as Israel, to work stolen land.” My tutor admitted that this project had a good entry point, but then she started panicking. I could visibly see the loading symbol in her head. Eventually, the thing she said to me was, “You should think about your classmates who have family in Israel.” She just kept talking about how the situation was changing and then making this hand sign [Waves hand in a circle motion] and I was like, “Why do you keep doing this?” I kept trying to talk more about my projects, and she just kept saying the situation is changing [Waves hand again]. I was like, “What? What is going on?” It's this classic thing where people make you feel like you can't think.
I want to name and contextualize that this is absolutely nowhere near the level of repression that a lot of people have had forced upon them by institutions. This is one of the softer parts of repression, like the really gentle smothering bits of it. Fun fact: I found out that said tutor got a really big commission from the Zabludowicz collection, the subject of one of the longest arts and cultural BDS campaigns in the UK.
JK: That is a really wild story. I know that you have had really difficult and contentious experiences in your MA, but I'm surprised that it was so explicit, even though I'm also not surprised at the same time. Just the bald-facedness of it.
O: It was difficult to experience. Also because it felt like, “This is really stupid, I shouldn't be caring about this. This is beneath me. I should be doing cool dope shit, you know?” But the general landscape isn't divided into ‘cool dope shit’ and ‘stupid stuff.’ It's all interconnected.
Then I started thinking, “What do I do that is actually meaningful in these contexts?” [Everything that happened at the programme was] ‘correct’ in the way that [students are] being groomed into desiring. At my art school at least, you were told to just get along nicely with everybody. And it's like: Okay, but some of you are genocidal bootlickers? I don't want to work with you, actually.
And of course, oh, it's so funny: these people are obsessed with cancel culture.
JK: Something I've been thinking a lot about is institutional refusal. I also felt that I had been duped [by academia], and that these things that I was being groomed into desiring and the kind of person that I was being groomed to [becoming] by these institutions—which is not just the institution, but also the people in the institution who stand for it, and who represent it through their very bodies… Realizing, “Oh actually, I don't want any of this, because wanting this also means wanting all the violence that comes with it.” But then, all of a sudden—the Sara Ahmed of it all!—you're standing against so much. Just in that refusal, you become such a big problem.
For you, this refusal and the difficulties that come with it hasn't just been at art school. It was also a residency that you recently did—the sense where you just have to be like, “Hold on, what is everyone doing?” As if you're in The Office and you're begging to make eye contact with the camera or something. That's something that I've been feeling a lot as well.
I also love the [reference to the] late 2000s, early 2010s internet sphere. During that time I was on the internet, but I was mostly spending a lot of time on Deviantart and reading manga, so I don't know what political discussions were happening then, but if you would like to elaborate on that as well, I would be super interested.
O: The 2000s feminist internet… For me, it was very Americanized. I still know some people from that period of my life, which is wild. Mainly, we were on this forum, and we would talk about what was going on in US politics… It was such a long time ago!
But I find it interesting how people more my age talk about that early period of the internet as being less enclosed, less full of junk. And yeah, to a certain extent, that was true, but then you get this almost reactionary narrative: “Nothing bad happened on the internet before then! Now it's full of these degenerates.” No, that's not true. There were predators online, it's not just a scary story. It was kind of wild, actually, to think about how I was on the internet and learning and being like, “Yeah, I'm so pro-choice, I think women should have rights as well,” and then also just be online chatting with dirty men, because I not okay in terms of my mental health and my self-esteem.
JK: Thank you so much for sharing. Do you want to move on to the next question? Or do you have things to add?
O: I found it valuable to reflect upon how this earlier period of individualized, bodily… I haven't seen Poor Things, but I have heard about it [and how it portrays] this process of sexual self-discovery [that] then generates something else. [A process like] that can look like, “Oh, that doesn't sound good or respectable, actually. And that's fine.”
There might be some pressure to appear like your political journey is this dry, respectable awakening, coming-of-consciousness sort of thing according to cleaned up ideas of what your autobiography should be, or something. A lot of the time, [when] we talk about sexual trauma, we almost have to be on the defensive and be like, “Well, I'm not gay because of that, I’m not trans because of the trauma.” But it's also not _un_related, and it's also not unrelated to how I engage with organizing now—thinking really carefully about power dynamics and things like that. It's just very intimate and messy.
It is really hard to tell that story, and I also think it is hard to admit that it's never a linear thing. It's not like, “I'm going towards enlightenment in this diagonal line” or anything. There are a lot of clumsy and weird and confused moments along the way.
JK: This idea of the narratives that serve us… An obvious one is the ‘wrong body’ narrative for trans people and how, in some situations, you [are compelled] to promote that [neat narrative in order to get access to things like healthcare]. But that shouldn't actually be [the only language available to people]. Everything is messy.
I also love what you said earlier about the ‘gentle smothering of repression’ and the different forms that that takes. It makes me think of The Handmaiden: the flashback to Hideko's childhood with her aunt [where] the uncle covers their faces with his leather glove[d hands] until they stop speaking. Actually, [even] gentle smothering is still really violent—the hand in front of the face.
How did you and I meet?
O: We met at a mutual friend's zine project, in 2019. It was at the National Portrait Gallery, and we were investigating the lack of portraiture of people who we'd now understand as East and Southeast Asian [in terms of the terminology used]. I remember we sat in the cafe afterwards and listened to each other talk, and I have no idea what I said, but I remember that you used the word “subjectivity” and I remember being like, “Okay, I'm going to nod because this person sounds really smart and I want to signal that…” [Laughs] “They’re just like me for real!”
JK: Wow I don't remember anything that I or anyone else said that evening, but I cringe. (I guess I should interrogate why I cringe so much to think of who I was back then.) That was a really fun night; I met so many people that I am still paying attention to now and [loving] seeing what they're doing.
It's interesting to think of this fairly new invention: [the term] ESEA [pronounced “ee-see” and standing for ‘East and Southeast Asian’], and the different connotations it has taken on. The term kinda hit the ground running [amidst COVID in 2020 and discourses about anti-Asian racism]. [The term and the discourse it’s engendered has] appropriated and maybe captured a lot of the momentum that was already taking place [in the years before 2020]. But it also, I think, helped focus things [by giving these tendencies a name that is easy to use]. The way you put it: “What is now known as ESEA.” Because, yeah, at the time, that wasn't a term that we were using [in the mainstream way we are now], but it was what we were thinking about.
Do you think that there are meaningful differences between that time and the more mediatised idea of ESEA now?
O: It felt like we were having way more of a laugh, which isn't allowed in the mediatised [version of] ESEA, except in certain ways by the mainstream ESEA comedians, which is weird. Like, there's only so many jokes you can make about your mum having an accent, you know? Maybe stop doing that.
I think, as well, there was this willingness, around the time that we did the project together, to have a bit more of a laugh and to think a little bit more expansively about what it might be for the world to look really different. To go through and beyond possibility. Whereas, as you say, the term hit the ground running in, basically, the following six months, and it became very literally mediatized through certain groups [who were] mediating between the public and this ‘community,’ which had suddenly been called into existence. Very literally: they got together in little group chats and they organized appearances on TV, they organized reports and panel talks, and things like that. And they also started querying agents. So, [by] sheer dint of having to be legible in the general British public eye…
God, it's basically like an assimilation speedrun. There's these people who I call Representasians, who are part of these NGO-ized groups, who call themselves grassroots activists, [when in fact] these are usually corporate girlies who are doing this as ‘community building’ work. It always has [a] trace of the institution about it. They've basically created an identity term, a sociological category—I mean, to speak strictly of sociology as a study. [Yet] it hasn't actually helped people within the [academic] field to do useful research. I opened up a conversation with a friend who is in this field, and she said it hasn't really helped her work. [But also], helping academic work [is a] compromised [act], right? It would look like creating meaningful pools of knowledge that could then secure some form of resources for the group's concern. [But] that has not really been the main focus, it hasn't directly enabled [this].)
How the Representasians think it works, is what Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò has described as a “racial Reaganomics”: [it] all trickles down. They think [that by being on] TV, a community centre will magically open.
[The ESEA term] can be this savvy pitch: if you tap into the right pulse, then you can get more out of it. I don't fully know if ‘neoliberal capitalism’ is [a] useful way of framing the dynamics at hand, but I still use it because I think it does describe the interpenetration of a kind of marketised identity with human life. You can just say [that] it's an irreducible feature of capitalism in general.
But anyway, the ESEA identity was pretty much explicitly, de facto used to triangulate against Black people in the post-BLM [movement of 2020] moment of racial awareness. A lot of reactionary Asians were just straight up racist. And even the Representasian politic, there is an implicit anti-Blackness to it, I think. Not even implicit—it's just explicit, because a lot of it hinges on increased policing and the expansion of hate crime legislation, and a certain vision / politics of safety and innocence. All of this is a part of institutionalized anti-Blackness.
People seem to think that softening certain aspects of the language is a way to not be anti-Black. Or they do this horrific misguided thing, where they say, “Oh, you know, the Black community also deals with stereotypes; or Muslims also deal with stereotypes.” And then they name the stereotype, out loud with their mouths, and you're like, “Oh no.” And then that's not all: they [go on to] say, “It's just like how people think Asians spread COVID.” I see your intention, but you're wrong [to try and make direct equivalencies between the kinds of racism that different groups face].
I find it so strange how this has all happened under our very eyes, in the past few years.
JK: As you mentioned, now it's gotten to a point where the books are coming out. It's like, “Shut up about Scarlett Johansson.” Or the amount of people who were like, “I didn't care about anything until COVID happened and then, and then suddenly I feared for my life and I realized that this could be our BLM.” It's so strange because I imagine that they must think that they're doing the right thing. They can't all be grifters. But the grift is expansive… There is range in the grift.
Despite the shifting landscape of quote-unquote ‘ESEA’ identity in the UK, there are also exciting things happening. I think of the workshops about connections between Vietnam and Palestine that ESEA Sisters has put on, [as well as] your work [and] your critiques…
(I love that you wrote notes [for this interview]. I'm interested in the form [of these interviews], how this frame acts as a frame, and what it can generate.)
[Anyway], there are amazing things happening through—as you say—digging into contradictions. Thank you for your service. Is there anything else you'd like to say about how we met before we move on?
O: I think it's worth noting that we have not actually met in real life that much, or even spoken, or that much, but I think I can trust you with a lot of things.
JK: Me too. It is nice. We keep running into each other at events.
What does the word care mean to you?
O: Oh, gosh, I've been thinking so much about care. I realised that when you ask this question, I feel like I'm supposed to—not that I think that you're trying to enforce it—that I'm supposed to give a positive definition, when all I want to do is be really negative and be like, “I don't think care is this.”
JK: These questions are merely prompts. Basically, the real question is just: “care?”
O: I think care is about a form of tension; about adjusting that tension according to context and need, and understanding that it will fail. Care is picking up the slack again.
We all have had different experiences of having failed in giving care or receiving care of some kind. Perhaps that contributes to less helpful framings of the thing that a lot of grifters call cancel culture.
[When grifters talk about cancel culture, they] don't want to explicitly say what their particular situation is all about, which is understandable because it's very intimate and messy. There is then a complete lack of discernment. [Sometimes], you were actually wrong [but] you want people to feel sorry for you. When people make general statements about ‘care,’ ‘accountability,’ things like that, I'm always listening for these little tells that [they] were [actually in the] wrong and [they’re] being defensive about it… It is usually a white person being mad that they were called white or something, to be honest, or in [an] extreme case, your partner is known in the community as being abusive, and you're just running interference.
[There was a Stop Asian Hate rally in London Chinatown that never ended up happening because known abusers were among the core organising group, and when this was raised as an issue, the whole thing collapsed.] What was set to be a major gathering point for the ESEA community collapsed because of this complete lack of care, and [because of] violence and aggression. This relational work—a lot of groups think that it's beneath them. It is feminized labour. Specifically, in certain contexts, [it is] transfeminised labour… if a trans woman or a transfeminine person doesn't just absorb the dysfunction and abuse of the group. I think that care should be about communising the mental load as well as the physical tasks, so that one person doesn't have to absorb all of it.
The kind of ESEA organising groups, [like I said], a lot of them are corporate girlies doing charity work. It shows how they go about this. They don't do [the] proper organising work of getting people Invested in the project emotionally and feeling like they have like a group ownership. Instead, there's just this core friendship group where they really big themselves up, and then there [are] outliers that are just sort of like, “Okay, why are we here then?” Like: “Well technically we're included so I guess we'll try to get in there.” But they're not actually interested in really including you [especially if you’re not the ‘right’ kind of ESEA].
JK: I've been thinking a lot about [what Dambudzo Marechera called] the ‘brain surgery’ that the very idea of prestige performs upon people. It's actually so hard to get people to let go of even just wanting prestige or thinking that prestige is what everyone wants. That really shows in a lot of things.
I wonder whether you wanted to talk a little bit about Remember and Resist. I suddenly remembered how Remember and Resist came out of the [moment surrounding the deaths of] the Essex 39 [in October 2019]. I still remember where I was when I found out the news and how deeply upsetting and devastating it was. I remember hearing about the rally that Remember and Resist (or its prototype) was organizing that evening.
O: With Remember and Resist, I'm not a core part of the group, but I was always a friend, and I really have to credit them for inviting me to more explicitly politicise my thinking. I learned to name anti-Blackness in the ESEAs who call for more hate crime legislation [and] more state protection [in response to anti-Asian racism]. [I argued] that it doesn't actually address what is needed in this moment, because why are we calling for literally the same state bodies to protect us—people with civil status, with citizenship—when they're the exact same state bodies who carry out raids [on] people without regular status? And who enforce the borders, and who increase the risk of the borders, and who enforce the monetization of the borders, which directly contributes to the proximity to death—and in this case, the actual group death of Vietnamese migrants?
I mainly knew [Remember and Resist’s members] through daikon*. daikon* felt more light-hearted, but there was always this presence of, for example, anti-borders organizing groups at their events. Alongside the more ‘representation’ kind of content, there [were] always these deeper dives and considerations into the contradictions of diaspora identity. I really felt this invitation to think more deeply and carefully about my identity. I felt challenged in a really good way. I felt held and known and respected—to be offered the chance to engage in something which was, I guess, [something] a lot of people think is negative. To break down certain parts of your identity, to release this desire for prestige, and to be something else. I don't fully know what is going to come out of the other end.
I'm thinking about this as well, because literally in the past two days, there's [been] this screening and exhibition about the six Chinese survivors of the Titanic. This has been really embedded in the Representasian discourse. I have no idea why. Why are they so obsessed with these people? What is so vivid about this—the sea journey or something?
JK: I guess it's about the ‘seat at the table’ thing, right? Of inserting, of being like, “Oh, there were Chinese people in this historical event where you might have never guessed that there were people of color,” because especially for pre-1940s [UK history], the other available histories [in this time] are indentured workers, sailors, and stuff like that [which might be less respectable]. It's almost like this is the only… I don't want to say “middle class,” but [perhaps] this is like a moment to insert yourself into a history that isn't necessarily about being a ‘migrant’ or being an exploited worker or whatever, but it's just like: “We were there.” In this rather sanitized tragedy. We can think about it without having to think about any of the other things [that might be more troubling or destabilising, such as colonialism and exploitation]. I don't know if that makes sense.
I really appreciate daikon* because they went from a zine arguably had ‘representation’ elements—obviously, there's nothing wrong with that inherently—but [daikon* was also] associated with these networks that then became much more explicitly political. These burgeoning quote-unquote ‘ESEA’ networks were taking place [before the 2020 wave when ‘ESEA’ became a coined, marketable term], that were very radical and that gave people the space to think about and make [radical] connections in a very real way. Maybe doing all that other work has meant that daikon* itself [hasn’t continued] as consistently as it had been, but I don't think that that's a loss, right? It’s just an evolution of what people are doing.
You don't have to answer this, but what does anarchism mean to you? Or, what makes you decide to take on that label?
O: I ask myself this every day. I'm gazing thoughtfully at the window.
JK: That's okay. I'm drawing these little guys [attempts at portraits of Oarfish] in my notebook.
O: Oh, lovely. I am ideologically promiscuous, I think. For me, specifically, I would like to try something new, something else. The people I have met through Remember and Resist—and also various people who organise with, for example, Copwatches—have encouraged me to think about what anarchism could be.
I'm thinking, as well, about the challenge of trying to be present, because I'm dissatisfied with the nostalgia that people—at least in the UK context and diasporic context—tend to evince when they are talking about organizing in the 80s. Their version of global solidarities quite strongly adheres to concepts of Third World nationalism in a way that I don't think I'm fully comfortable with. I wish I could find a more sophisticated way of saying this, but… a lot of these people are just too cool with prison, you know? I've come through that through abolitionist thinking. Like, why do you think prison is cool in this context? Why do you think state coercion is okay in this context and why do you think that critiquing [the carceral] is liberal, rather than consistent with abolitionist politics? It's quite challenging to walk this fine line between being discerning about what is just stupid CIA propaganda and [a] mouthpiece for US interventionism [versus] being really discerning about what people in the local contexts are actually saying, especially when people actually have very different beliefs and ideas about how to move forward.
I think it's very important to note that in other contexts, sometimes anarchism is associated with a very reactionary movement where people are like, “Oh yeah, if we were to return to the land and a lovely garden, everything would be okay,” and it's like, “No, no, I don't think so.” Anyway, in a UK context, a lot of the people who do, for example, street defence and effective de-arrest and things like that do tend to come from an anarchist organiser background. At least that is my current understanding. So there is this sense of reintroducing tension [and conflict to political organising and action], which I think is really important. Whereas people who mainly identify as abolitionists very understandably focus on the care part of the equation, not necessarily the purposeful tension part of the equation [when it comes to] affecting social change and overthrow of power.
JK: That's lovely. Thank you so much for engaging with my question. What are the feelings that you're having right now?
O: I'm looking at my notes and my eyes are just focused on the phrase “Israeli-Argentinian.”
JK: The [Zionist] person at the [infoshop 56a] residency.
O: Yeah. That was a bad time.
JK: I really admire you for… I've felt a lot of inspiration from examples in which [people] have just stood up and walked out of the room, and how important it is to model that. Like, you can just leave. But how hard that can be sometimes.
What are some of the things that you would like to learn or learn about?
O: I've been learning about how to be in my body, as part of organising, because we all have our various deep issues. It is part of that work, which I was talking about earlier, that people feel a lot of contempt towards because it is feminized. It can feel—and has some language which is related to—disciplining. For example, the idea that you would ideally be emotionally regulated during conflicts: that seems quite rigid, but that is how we move through conflict and actually resolve issues. I've been in conversations with quite frankly the most vile manarchists who are just very self-aggrandizing and they think that this is being assertive. But there is no solution, there's just the idea that they are more anarchist than you, which is so boring.
I really enjoy the idea that I’m a terrible anarchist, to be honest. I am like, “Yeah, so what?” But I also keep thinking about the facilitator at 56a being like, “We can still hold space for this,” after I walked out of the workshop. Like, “Hold space; I'm walking away. You don't have to make me stay here.” What about holding space for me and how I feel?
JK: Thinking a lot about what it means, different valences of complicity, silence, falling in rank, or closing ranks, or whatever the phrase is. Why that happens. I think sometimes it's really obvious—it feels really obvious, but that doesn't feel like enough of an explanation. “Oh, people just choose comfort, or people don't want to be uncomfortable, people choose things that are easy. They make compromises.” [While I can see why they would do that], I guess sometimes it just feels like, “Is that really it? [That’s the explanation for all this violence and complicity?]”
O: It felt, again, not surprising to be in an anarchist space and still being [with] people who are in complete lockstep with the state, you know?
So yes, the work of being in my body and caring for my feelings, without being excessively self-centered, but also not abandoning my own needs when I'm supporting and caring for other people. Again, maintaining that tension in myself.
Something else I would like to learn: I wish I could say something really impressive or whatever, but I really want to learn to play the piano again.
JK: That's really good, that's really sweet.
O: I guess I've been thinking about sound. It is related to being my body, because I sing to self-regulate, so I've been thinking: What is my body doing when I'm singing?
Again, this is part of the prestige thing. [My family was trying to] kid ourselves into thinking we were just so middle class—I had piano lessons growing up. Classical music was really associated with having achieved a measure of social mobility. Having a genteel hobby and a cultured understanding of the world. It was probably related, I think, to my dad. This is how he phrases it: it was Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 that he heard on his little radio, because even the poorest household in Thailand would have a radio. On the university radio show, he heard that, and he thought, “There's a world outside of my really poor household, and it's a beautiful world, a world of possibility…… So I'm going to go to England.” And I said, “But why didn’t you go to Russia?” He was like, “No, Thailand was very anti-communist,” and I was like, “Yeah, do you think maybe some of your reactionary beliefs are to do with growing up with Cold War propaganda?” But he doesn't see it that way, which is interesting.
When I do get the odd gig [related to my writing work], I often have to speak at it, and I'm very nervous about it, because I'm just not in my body. That's part of it: having to do readings (vomit.) But, it's a job, and not a bad job as they go.
It does make me feel a horrible little grifter, though, to have a speaker fee. You know what I mean? But then I learned—having gone to the book talks by Representasians—they don’t know what the hell they're talking about either. So I don't need to feel that self-conscious about it.
JK: Is there anything else that you would like to say or to ask me?
O: Yes, I want to talk about your [story], ‘Sequence from a dream,’ in relation to a piece of theatre that I saw recently. It was this one person show by Tasnim Siddiqa Amin, called The Pigs Are Coming. It was a work-in-progress at Camden People's Theatre, and it is a work that blends spoken words, movement, audience participation, and makes use of various recording and projection technologies to—she said herself—work through the trauma of having been arrested during the Bibby Stockholm blockade [in May 2024].
There was this bit where she depicts her own arrest. She binds up her own hands and sort of [throws] herself about the stage while the person doing tech follows her around filming her on the phone. [The] footage that is being filmed on the phone is [simultaneously] projected onto the wall behind the stage. Earlier or alongside that (I can't quite remember), we see actual footage of her actual arrest. It's, of course, not only footage of her being arrested and bodily carried off by police officers, we're also getting people who are imaging her arrest, who are filming her. And so, you feel complicit in this. It's a moment of complicity for everyone who is a bystander.
I was talking about it with a comrade who has a lot more experience with street defence. I actually wasn't sure how he would receive it because I think there is perhaps this received knowledge—at least maybe in our circles—that to make art of a traumatic thing can diminish it, and it's self-centred [or self-indulgent] to do it, and not what is needed in this moment. (I do sort of cringe from so-called ‘political art,’ which is [received by people as] “Ugh! So important!” [but] it’s just… a mid experience?) I shared my experience of the play with [my comrade] to see what he would say, and he said that he was really glad that the performer could work through her trauma like that, with a theatre audience, because many people take that experience of state repression to the grave, and it psychologically haunts you.
I was thinking of that, how you wrote your story about waiting to be arrested. And that's what my friend said as well: it's the waiting that really gets his comrades in particular—waiting and looking at these wanted lists and seeing your face on it and being scared to travel to certain places. It's the fear, it's the psychological aspect of it which is a part of the repression itself.
I've been thinking about the depths… It's really tender, your work, but also it cuts so deep. There really ought to be more work like this, but I think the people who have experienced state repression and who feel equipped to write about it with the seriousness it deserves, they're very rare and few. It isn't rewarded and supported by the broader culture, I don't think. I've been wondering if you have anything else you want to say about your work.
JK: Thank you so much for that. It's so meaningful, that meant so much to me, to hear you say all that and to bring my work into dialogue with… While you were speaking, I was investigating this play that you were talking about, and it seems [great]. I guess there is this concern about the ethics of having written… of turning this [kind of experience] into art and what political art even is.
I realize recently that my relationship towards the function of art—maybe obviously—has changed a lot. [It] has become a much more intentional question ever since my audience got bigger a couple years back. Because my audience is bigger, because I expect to have a bigger audience, that has changed how I feel about what I'm making. I suddenly feel an expectation, and the stakes feel higher.
Going back to the story, I think that's why it was so unique as an experience to write, because when I wrote it, I wasn't thinking about audience at all. It was so confessional. But then afterwards, I'm pretty happy with the way that I released it in a DIY way that bypassed capitalist [publishing] infrastructure—that felt really important. I'm still really really proud of it as a work, and it's funny because I think, in some ways, it spoke to a lot of things that I didn't even know about yet. As time has gone on and different kinds of conflicts and contradictions have come to light in like my own quote unquote ‘activist landscape,’ it's almost felt like, “Wow, there are so many layers to that story that I didn't even know when I was writing it.”
I’m desperately hungry for more examples of, like you say, people who have experienced state repression and are working on it [artistically]. Delicious Hunger by Hai Fan, translated by Jeremy Tiang—it’s a Tilted Axis book—is inspired by Hai Fan’s 13 years that he spent in the Malaysian rainforest as a [guerrilla] member of the Malayan Communist Party. The stories are all within that context: they're about people who are living in the rainforest, who are communists and who are fighting the enemy, but the narrative arcs of the stories are [sometimes] about heartbreak or awkward moments or like, “Oh my god, am I really annoying?” About being hungry, [and about] what happens when you get your period [but] you live full-time in the rainforest and you're being hunted by the government. It was just so electrifying to read. I really desperately need more stuff like this, which is just stuff that takes for granted the context… A setting in which people are materially fighting and struggling—simply, that is just the starting point—and then writing within that.
Although, when I was writing my story, I wasn't thinking at all about any of these things. I was mostly just thinking about how bad I felt.
O: My brain feels like, you know when you fill a pepper mill really full with peppercorns? Full of crunchy little thoughts.
JK: Thank you so much for being my friend and for being my colleague, actually.
O: I've been thinking about our job as ‘writers.’ The conventional route of being a writer—as we're seeing with the ESEA stuff in particular—is [that being a writer is about getting to do] our little gigs, to do our little readings. It's weird because [at these literary events] there is this consciousness that we're being staged as part of this microcelebrity encounter and we're meant to parrot the boring beliefs of the people who have come to see us, but in a more, like, micro-famous way [that is] therefore interesting. I would like something different to happen. [One time we ran into each other at a] Mohammed El-Kurd reading [in April 2023]. People [in the Q&A] were basically asking him to… He knew what was going on. I remember he said, “Oh, you want me to issue a fatwa?” I've listened to a couple of other interviews, talks done by him. It's clear that he sees [all this] as a part of his job, just like any other person, I know it's myself doing this as well. You learn your talking points and you say them. You always have this ready. You learn to recognise the shape and contour and rhythm of the questions that are coming and you are trained to respond. I'm just thinking about, “Christ, what must that be like in this current context?”
JK: I've been thinking about that too: just the fact that we have a ‘platform.’ What does it mean to think, “I'm a writer, I have some form of capital, because people who might not [even] know me want to hear what I have to say”?
For the past seven months I've been living off of my writing, literally. If this [a writer] is already what I am, then what am I gonna do about that? A lot of [my difficulty with that idea] has to do with the alienation that I feel between: my work, the concept of work, and money, and how money translates into my daily life. All of those things feel really alienated [from each other] and [it’s] kind of hard to really see the links. My friend [Rowan] was saying, “Well, yeah, this is your income. It's not the same as, like, Sunday money from Grandpa.” But I think I still have a tendency to see the money that I get from my writing as Sunday money from Grandpa.
I haven't done events and stuff like that, but I can imagine the strangeness of realizing that there's already a script for that evening; there's already a script for what they want you to say and that your persona is actively being shaped by your reception, that you are not in control of that.
O: Yeah, that is so real. There's also the freaky part where people are forming parasocial relationships with you. It does help to understand myself as a creative worker, and therefore, it's a part of a work persona that I'm performing. But it is really freaky to see people treat public-facing creative workers in a certain way, and then when you criticize them or you respond saying, “I don't think it's okay for you to be projecting this sort of thing on me and to treat me as if I don't have any kind of personal life.” They're like, “Well, I think you're being really privileged because you must be really rich and famous.” I realize that this is a really low level of analysis, but it's not without merit as well—[to some extent] everyone is kind of an influencer now, which is horrifying to me.
Going back to what it means to show solidarity, I've been thinking about how people view illegal and or unlawful acts. I'm speaking very broadly here because it applies generally to the recent [transphobic] EHRC ruling [on single-sex spaces] and it applies to Palestine solidarity, of course. I think what a lot of people are not clocking is [that] it's not like the government doesn't actually think about itself and the actions it does in terms. [When people say] “Oh, [this action is] unlawful [and] therefore bad, we can't do it,” [it’s frustrating] because we know the government has [done] a lot of unlawful [things]. The government, as with any other big organisation, has access to people with sophisticated legal knowledge that can give advice about legal risk. It's really helpful to frame it in terms of that, because it is really harmful to walk back solidarity, especially if that solidarity is legally risky. You have to be proactively engaging with what that risk is, so that you can mitigate certain undesirable outcomes, let's say, without shitting on, specifically, the right of Palestinians to resist.
In terms of the EHRC ruling, a lot of what people were doing was already unlawful, and it doesn't actually change what people are doing. What they were doing was already legally risky. That risk has increased. So what are we gonna do? A lot of people [who are] well-meaning liberal types, they're like, “Oh no, this thing is now unorthodox, we have to fold completely like a deck of cards.” No, you have to have some guts. Whatever it is, you have to reckon with the facts that there was always legal risk, and to reflect on what you can practically do in this situation. It isn't only that the discourse is frustrating and that people are annoying—we have to carry out so much care in figuring out what we are willing to permit, how we are willing to be, and what we are willing to tolerate. Safety is not an abstract thing here. People's lives are very literally on the line.
It's stressful when people can't even take what I think is [merely] symbolic actions, you know? When I've walked out of spaces and just not engaged or something, I think of that as being very symbolic. It is a practice for something bigger, but I'm still very real that this is symbolic, right? But people aren't even willing to do that.
JK: That makes me think of [an Instagram] story that you posted one time, where you said, “I am a very weak person, and even I have done certain things [to stand up for what’s right].” And I think it really struck me, to see you say that, “I'm a very weak person.” I was very amused, but also exhilarated by it, especially in terms of what you said just now—”Everyone's kind of an influencer now.” No one—very, very few people—would go on Instagram and say, “I'm a very weak person,” right? Especially within a sort of leftist context. I admire that, because I think that we should all see ourselves as weak people, because we [often] are, and knowing our vulnerabilities is a really crucial part of knowing our capacity, and [helps us figure out how to start] expanding our capacity. I don't know.
[‘Expanding my capacity’] feels like a buzz phrase, but I've been thinking about it a lot [ever since I saw it in a post by @pal_solidarity_zh]. I've been thinking a lot about ego, especially for those of us that live in the West—ego and coolness, and how that can really interfere with meaningful solidarity work. Maybe combating ego, combating egoistic ideas of coolness, and combating hints of saviorism etc might not always feel like the priority. I think [it’s] something that's really important. Another thing that a friend [Lucas] said—again, it's obvious, but I really needed to hear it in [such a blunt way in] that moment—is, “None of us are liberating Palestine.” Like, it's really obvious. There's actually such a huge difference between what we're doing and what's happening in Palestine and what Palestinian people are doing. That's something that we can never forget, even though it sometimes feels like the lines are [being] blurred, especially [with the way people frame things] on the internet.
I have been thinking about it ever since I saw it: “I am a very weak person.”
O: I'm glad that you've taken that up because it felt really wet to say that. [It felt] like a fabrication [to] even be admitting that. Well, who cares about the fact [that I was afraid]…? I’m also fed up of a lot of people talking about how scared and frightened they are, and that's why they're not doing anything, anything at all, not even the symbolic action, nothing. I'm like, “Well, I'm just an absolute drip, but I still did this. So, what does that make you?” Yeah.
Do you ever think about how other people are proud of their cowardice?
JK: Please say more.
O: It was a point I noted down in the context of the art school thing, where people are under-theorized and they're really proud of their cowardice. Usually [this is] part of pretty much explicitly saying that any critiques of white artists is racist, is cancel culture, whereas they [with] their big smart brains know better than to give in to these critiques because [it should] really about the art or whatever. It did not really surprise me, then, to understand that these people are also Zionists. It was important to say that they are Zionists because they actively enabled the Zionist students to make horrible Zionist art projects. Not only that, but [the art school then] gave them prime spots in the exhibition, while I was literally shoved in the shed at the back, it's so funny.
But then, thinking about how I said that I'm a very weak person, but I still did this. I wonder if is that also a certain pride in cowardice? Because I think I'm saying, “This insufficiently strong personality, [this] floppy cardboard [person] then resulted in a drippy action, which was insufficient, but I still did this. I was still a pile of wet cardboard. What does that make the rest of you who are not even this pile of wet cardboard?” Is that a false arrogance?
JK: For me, what it makes me think of is that Tumblr thing: “Do it scared.” Which, unfortunately, I believe in a lot: do it scared.
I think people are always evoking [this] sense that we should all be cowards. Like, “Oh, I'm so scared.” People will be like, “Oh, I can't do this because I'm just in a really precarious situation. I can't do this or that.” Obviously, those things are true: [there are always risks with] immigration status, financial status and having a safety net, and then people's identities and how they might fare under repression. These are all real [and scary] things. But I don't know, I can't help but think of all my friends I know who have very, very few privileges and who are still doing things that are brave.
Maybe this actually comes into my series of thoughts [that I’ve discussed a lot with my girlfriend Alison] about guilt and how I don't think that guilt should ever be your primary motivation to do something, especially in the context of protest and [solidarity]. Sometimes I'll be like, “I didn't go to this rally and I feel so bad that I didn't go. I should have gone.” But if literally the only reason I was gonna go to this rally was because I was gonna feel guilty for not going, that's not a good enough reason. That is still centering yourself and it belongs to this broader set of discourses in which, implicitly, there is this idea that somehow doing a [certain] series of actions is going to absolve us of our guilt or absolve us of feeling bad. That we're doing these things so that we can feel less bad about ourselves. I don't think that's a good enough reason to do things, especially if you're a Westerner, because we're never going to stop being complicit. We're never going to get rid of our guilt and become the perfect activist who cannot be critiqued and who has done everything perfectly.
Not even dead activists are perfect. [Although] the closest you can get to being the perfect activist is to die; it’s to be Rachel Corrie. Obviously, that sucks. You shouldn't want that. You shouldn't [desire] to go to prison for life and just be a political prisoner. In some ways, [if that happened], yeah, maybe you'll be close to perfect [but that’s mostly] because there's a lot of things you can't do [anymore.]
Feeling bad—it's always going to be a thing that we are gonna feel. But I think that we should do things out of genuine desire to do things, instead of feeling as though we have to, because otherwise we're bad people. Sometimes you can tell when guilt is kind of the primary motivator for stuff… It’s a whole like complex set of things. But I still don't think there's anything wrong with saying, “I'm a very weak person, and I still did this.” That is also in the context of specific things that you experienced. Some of these very small actions, people would just be like, “Oh, I can't do it because my situation is so important.”
People should perform acts of refusal and acts of solidarity and acts of protest because they want to. They should want to do it because they should care. They should notice injustice and they should want to interrupt moments of injustice.
O: Is guilt an ugly feeling?
JK: Yes, I think so. I think that it's also worth investigating [in all its different valences]. For example, white guilt; guiltiness in the legal sense; the guilt that comes with the particular issue of our generation, which is the fear of being cancelled; and then there's guilt because you've actually done a specific thing to harm someone. Oh, don't forget guilt tripping and being the eldest daughter of immigrants.
O: Oh! Yeah, that's a whole gender right there.
JK: Even just the idea of ‘eldest daughter of immigrants’ has itself become a discourse, become a trope. It's an interesting trope. Sometimes I see people and I think, “This person has a real case of eldest daughter syndrome.”
O: Cut fruit.
JK: Cut fruit.
O: What are your thoughts?
JK: The crazy thing is, I've experienced cut fruit, unlike stinky lunch, which I've never experienced. Actually maybe I did [experience stinky lunch] in a different way… Complex. What do you think?
O: I hate that people think it is a universal reality.
This also very much informs this Representasian subjectivity. To get back to what we've been talking about, because of this politics of safety and this feeling of guilt, it means that a lot of ESEA discourse on Palestine and ESEA action on Palestine is insufficient or lacking—unless it is really actively looking at the entanglement and the histories. Mainly because I think people, Representasians in particular, are wedded to this dogmatic non-violence, are wedded to the current state as saviour. So they can't imagine—not imagine, they can't actually engage with—the reality of what is going on. It is really frustrating to see the big ESEA events simply not engaging with the reality of the world, because I don't understand what people can ever gain from it, except to feel a sort of mild comfort.
[Gossiping session occurs off the record here.]
O: I'm really grateful to a writer called Michael Richmond. He wrote a book on identity politics with Alex Charnley. They pay lots of attention to Chinese worker organising in [the] 19th [and] early 20th century: there's a particular role they occupied [in that time] and these writers have much more ably navigated [questions like], “What does it mean when you position migrants as a virus and [as] causes of virulence to shore up a white, working-class movement?” It's quite harrowing, the historical events that they describe, but they're also keen to contextualize this in terms of how the workers tried to organise even though it was really, really difficult to do so. The possibility of resistance, not within representation discourse.