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Theme: 8. Negotiating Margins: Representations, Resistances, Agencies
Lin Song
Jinan University, China
Lin Song
Jinan University, China
Howard Chiang
University of California - Santa Barbara, United States
Ruepert Jiel Dionisio Cao
De La Salle University, Philippines
Runze Ding
Beijing Normal University - Hong Kong Baptist University United International College, China
Ella Mei Ting Li
Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Though often understood through a methodologically national frame, sexual cultures – cultural articulations of people’s sexual beliefs, behaviors, ideologies, and subjectivities about sexual nature and pleasure (Herdt 1999, p. 9) – have always exceeded national boundaries and challenged the totalizing narrative of Western globalization. The end of the recent COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to both renewed and novel forms of physical and digital mobilities across Asia, prompting us to attend to the changing contours of Asian sexual cultures and their impact on marginalized communities. Threaded by a shared theoretical rubric of “inter-Asia”, which privileges regional, in lieu of Western, frames of reference in mapping circuits of knowledge exchange and production (Chen and Chua 2002), this panel brings together scholars from a range of disciplines and geographical focuses to address the following questions: how do inter-Asian connections engender sexual cultures across distinct cultural, political, and affective landscapes in Asia? How do they empower or restrict marginalized communities in negotiating with heteronormativity? And ultimately, how could an inter-Asian perspective shed new light on geographies of sexual cultures in Asia?
Echoing the inter-Asian project as movement (Chen and Chua 2015), this panel moves across space and time, investigating how historical and contemporary formations of sexual cultures both are linked to and produce new inter-Asian connections and disconnections. We start with the case of eunuchism, through which we suggest that the interrelations between historical actors and their con/texts necessitate an alternative, non-hierarchical framework to understand global transness. We then unpack the post-pandemic moment of intensified movement of people across Asia, which has given rise to “inter-Asian queer pornography” that both enable new queer connections and create spatial and linguistic homonormative hierarchies. Next, we study how increasing transnational connections and tensions shape the sexual subjectivities of Chinese young men watching Japanese Adult Videos. Finally, we look at the transnational shipping fandom of Hong Kong’s soft-masculinity boyband Mirror in the cultural and affective landscape of post National Security Law Hong Kong. Collectively, papers in this panel demonstrate the productiveness and necessity of an inter-Asian optic in making sense of sexual cultures across Asia.
Presenter: Howard Chiang – University of California - Santa Barbara
Presenter: Ruepert Jiel Dionisio Cao – De La Salle University
Presenter: Runze Ding – Beijing Normal University - Hong Kong Baptist University United International College
Presenter: Ella Mei Ting Li – Chinese University of Hong Kong