The AsiaPacifiQueer (APQ) Network developed from a common sense of disciplinary exclusion and professional alienation within the Australian academy by a scholars researching Asian same-sex and transgender cultures and histories. Established Asian area studies departments are often unsympathetic, if not hostile, towards critical theory and research on homosexuality and transgenderism. And until comparatively recently otherwise queer-friendly and theoretically engaged cultural studies departments in Australia have focused on the study of Western societies, with the issues of linguistic, discursive, and theoretical translation at the heart of the practice of Asian cultural studies and Asian queer studies tending to be overlooked. These issues are more than matters of intellectual debate. The multiple exclusions suffered by Asian queer studies often impact deleteriously on the academic careers of those who conduct this research. Difficulties in finding sympathetic MA and PhD supervisors, the failure of academic libraries to acquire holdings in Asian-language queer materials, limited access to research funds, and restricted job opportunities together reflect the imbricated networks of professional homophobia and Eurocentrism that students of Asian queer studies confront.
Since it was established in 2000, the aim of APQ has been to intervene strategically to confront these multiple exclusions, bringing together academics, research students, and activists in collective attempts to inscribe queer studies within Asian studies and to locate Asia, and the non-West, within cultural studies. We have used a variety of approaches. To build networks amongst often-isolated Asian queer studies researchers we have organised dedicated APQ conferences, and we have convened APQ streams of panels within Asian studies, cultural studies, and Western queer studies conferences. Full reports of past APQ activities are listed on other pages of this website.
We have been both surprised and delighted by the extent of international interest in APQ. At the 3rd International Convention of Asian Scholars (ICAS 3) held in Singapore in August 2003 APQ convened a stream of six highly successful panels of two dozen papers, bringing together Asian and Western scholars working on a diverse range of Asian queer studies topics. An impromptu meeting of almost 40 ICAS 3 participants revealed that Asian queer studies researchers across the region suffer from institutional marginalisation and professional exclusion. The meeting recommended unanimously that the APQ initiatives begun in Australia be extended internationally and work towards convening an international Asian queer studies conference in Asia. Following up this recommendation, the APQ Network secured the cooperation and support of the Office of Human Rights Studies at Mahidol University in Bangkok in co-convening the conference: "Sexualities, Genders and Rights in Asia: The 1st International Conference of Asian Queer Studies" held in Bangkok in July 2005. Enthusiasm for this event exceeded all our expectations, with over 160 papers being presented and more than 500 people attending.
APQ's desire to facilitate intra-regional linkages arises from more than just our discomfort with the marginalisation of Asia-focussed queer studies within the academy. It also relates to a series of persistent anxieties about the placing of queer studies in the current world order, broadly geo-political as well as academic. These anxieties relate most directly to the ongoing dominance of US-based research and researchers within the field. Seen from outside, the mainstream of North American queer studies can appear rather solipsistic, with its unquestioned assumption that the most interesting and most important sites for queer analysis are to be found within the borders of the US nation state. As those working outside of this centre are all too aware, the effects of such US-centrism are real and consequential. When the world's most richly funded research institutions, the most influential university presses, and the biggest market for English-language publications in the humanities and social sciences are all located within a single nation, a certain skewing of perspectives is probably inevitable. This system is self-perpetuating. Many Asian queer studies researchers find it difficult to publish their work because US-based publishers presume that the market for such work will be limited since the "most important" readership (i.e. within the US) will be unfamiliar with the material. This system also results in a highly uneven distribution of scholarly and cultural capital. While queer studies scholars from Delhi to Bangkok and from Kuala Lumpur to Tokyo have no choice but to acquire an understanding of the intricate workings of contemporary sexual cultures in the cities of the USA, the sites from which the most widely disseminated queer theory is written, the converse is very seldom the case. It is possible for North American queer studies scholars to build successful careers while remaining almost completely ignorant of the global diversity of non-Western (and also non-American Western) queer cultures and histories. North American sexual cultures––from subcultural scenes to media products; from gay and lesbian activism to everyday sexual and gendered practices––are presumed to be primary and general while non-American sexual cultures, both Western and non-Western, are framed as particular and secondary. APQ feels that the time is right to bring together the growing group of scholars working on sexuality studies in the Asia Pacific region to challenge this situation by consolidating a distinct intellectual movement: queer studies in Asia and the Pacific. This intellectual movement builds on the ex-centric location of Australia as simultaneously being both of the West and in Asia, providing a site for developing a critical paradigm that unsettles the hegemony of both Western and Asian orthodoxies. The range of APQ projects in this movement is diverse and innovative. It includes everyday sexualities, sexual health, media cultures, and social movements as well as queer Asian diasporas in the Asia Pacific whose ex-centric practices reflect this critical paradigm through their dual questioning of the heteronormativity of both 'home' (Asian) and 'host' (Australian/Western) cultures.
We hope that our various conferences, workshops, and other projects will enable a transnational dialogue that not only challenges the disciplinary isolation of Asian queer studies by the structures of the Western academy, but equally importantly begins to build cross-linkages within emerging queer studies researchers in Asia and the Pacific. APQ activities are aimed at building horizontal networks among researchers, cultural workers, and activists working on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer cultures in our region. APQ sees its role in this project as principally that of a facilitator. We hope that the energies generated by bringing people together in APQ activities will sustain an ongoing web of working relationships across the region, extending beyond the Network's historical roots in Australia to become a genuinely regional network of mutual support and transnational collaboration.
Research School of Pacific & Asian Studies,
at The Australian National University.
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