The Promise of Chinese Ku’er: Affect and Transnational Queer Praxis

• In Event: Queer Asia and Homonationalism

Abstract

Chinese queer sexuality has been articulated in pop culture, activism and academia as embodying a promise for transformation -- on the one hand, the notion of sexual progress and individual sexual rights is placed as central to transform China from a socialist totalitarian state to a democratic neoliberal world power; on the other hand, vernacular queer practices are often utilized as examples par excellence to counter Euro-American queer studies and politics. Such desires, investments and attachments to the making of “Queer China” reflect intertwined discourses about modernity, time and difference, and simultaneously challenge and reinforce the asymmetrical transnational power structure and queer studies’ imperialist, colonialist and hierarchical assumptions. This paper examines the knowledge production of queerness in relation to the ambivalence of the post-socialist condition. Contrary to the normative and nationalist imagination of China as a future world power, “Queer China” embodies “hopelessness,” which ironically reflects the condition of the marginalized and fosters the transnational system of inequality, privilege and western-centrism. Comparing how “Queer China(s)” are produced differently in various locales, this paper pushes transnational queer scholarship to examine its own position in academic and cultural production.

Author

• Shana Ye, University of Minnesota