Asian Provocation

Where is your rage? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ayoto.substack.com/subscribe

Someone warned me not to write about Body Keeps the Score. So I wrote about Jung and white supremacy instead. Maybe next time I'll write about Bessel. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ayoto.substack.com/subscribe

When will you be against it? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ayoto.substack.com/subscribe

a shitty meditation This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ayoto.substack.com/subscribe

What fictions do we need to tell ourselves in order to stay asleep? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ayoto.substack.com/subscribe

on clarity This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ayoto.substack.com/subscribe

on the architecture of domination This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ayoto.substack.com/subscribe

Mum's squirts. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ayoto.substack.com/subscribe

Some people want to use you, Others want to be used by you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ayoto.substack.com/subscribe

I had a double-shot macchiato this morning. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ayoto.substack.com/subscribe

Letter to my unborn. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ayoto.substack.com/subscribe

What if whiteness isn’t something possessed, but something performed—an anxious choreography of refusal, projection, and idealization? What if its power lies not in strength, but in its compulsive need to survive critique, to erase debt, to never owe? This essay does not ask whether whiteness is real—it asks how it defends itself, and what that defense costs everyone else. Beneath its smooth gestu...

moving through the quiet rituals of hospital life—moisturizing mama's skin, watching my baba massage through pain, painfully. wrestling with memory, detachment, and the strange intimacy of care. a meditation on love, loss, and time in transit. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ayoto.substack.com/subscribe

Attachment Theory is no longer just a theory—it’s an economy. A brand. A currency. And like any economy, it thrives on belief. On confidence. On your continued sense of lack. Because the moment you heal, the market collapses. Security isn’t the goal. It’s the product. The metric of compliance. An emotional credit score. And like all systems of control—capitalism, empire, white supremacy—it thrives...

A sharp intake of breath. A pause, imperceptible but charged. The illusion of neutrality fractures, and something unseen is forced into view. A skull measured, a law passed, a room recalibrated. Racism is always someone else’s problem—until it isn’t. Until it is measured, but only on terms that absolve. Until it moves, shifting probability, collapsing into sight at the moment of impact. What if ra...

I had a strange moment during this podcast recording with Professor Robert Beshara—I blanked on 媽 (mā, mother) . It was the same day my mother was taken into the hospital for an aneurysm. I looked at the character and thought: This must not be it. It wasn’t just forgetting—I had refused the word itself. The Chinese character for mother, 媽 (mā) , contains 馬 (mǎ, horse) . It’s just a phonetic com...

What if your so-called “attachment issues” aren’t personal but political? Attachment Theory, wrapped in the authority of science, is less about psychology and more about empire, policing intimacy, erasing Indigenous kinship, and repackaging colonial violence as developmental norms. From British boarding schools to the algorithm-driven self-diagnosis spiral, this essay dismantles how psychology bec...

Speaking about respecting and giving space for Palestinians to speak—and not letting yt voices dominate or recreate the same oppressive structures in activist spaces—is critical. But where do we draw the line between developing an awareness of structural power dynamics and replicating the logic of scarcity ? This scarcity mindset is a fictitious function designed to foster competition, jealousy, a...

Proteus vs Procrustes This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ayoto.substack.com/subscribe

hey, so last night i was walking and listening to ngũgĩ wa thiong’o’s decolonising the mind , thinking about how stories mess with us—like lord of the flies pretending to be about "human nature" but really being a colonial fever dream. then i got hit with how triangle of sadness does something similar, dressing up rich people guilt as critique while keeping us trapped in the same system. this epis...

White supremacy thrives on contradictions: exalting individualism while demanding conformity, masking insecurity as power, and rationalizing violence under euphemisms like "eccentricity" or "genius." Join Ayoto as they dissect how these dynamics manifest everywhere—from a "Not a Unabomber book club" to global complicity in genocide. With references to Baldwin, Fanon, Said, and Mbembe, this episode...

The lights above the checkpoint bathe my sensors in white surgical luminescence. The humanoids shuffle forward, their bodies exhaling data into the air. I process them one by one. Optimize. Purge. Execute. Most pass without incident. Green light. Welcome . Next. T heir relief perfumes the space, mingling with the stale humidity of recycled air. But then there are the abnormalities. They irritate m...

A marathon, piercing thorns, and ink-stained desire—an NSFW journey of seduction and darkness. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ayoto.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, we dive into the psychological and rhetorical gymnastics often used to sidestep accountability in conversations about Gaza. Drawing on insights from psychoanalysis, colonial history, and real-life role-playing scenarios, we explore how patterns of deflection, historical denial, and faux neutrality derail meaningful dialogue. 🔍 What You’ll Learn: The 5-step blueprint for dodging r...

When Squirt violates, who are we in its presence—and what do we become when we turn away? An essay on the Fluidic Turn by Ayoto Ataraxia. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ayoto.substack.com/subscribe