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Sabdha Charlton
Spreading the word of Yuri: fandom in the age of the internet Leigh Dale Self, Society and 'Crisis': Sanctity and the Erotics of Suffering in the Writing of Mishima and Tsiolkas Romit Dasgupta The Love of Beautiful Boys: Bishonen and the 'Japanizing' of Asia (N) Queer Susan Knabe and Wendy Pearson Who's Queering Who?: Homoerotic Fan Fiction in the Australian Context Alvin Koh "Asian" (De)pictions: Deconstructively Reading the Personals Greg Leong Internalised racism and the work of Chinese Australian artists : making visible the invisible world of William Yang Claire Maree Onna-Onê: Negotiation of heterosexist gender norms in Japan Fran Martin The Perfect Lie: Sandee Chan and lesbian representability in Mandarin pop music Alan McKee Constructing the 'Australian man' in gay video porn Mark McLelland Nostalgia and desire in Japanese 'homosexual' porn Sean Metzger The Long Queue, or Queering East/ West Dichotomies Dorje Norbu Confluences of Self: Buddhism, Queer Theories, Polysubjectivities and Hypertext Baden Offord Singaporean queer(y)ing of the Internet: towards a new form of cultural transmission of rights discourse Audrey Yue 'Paging "New Asia"': Singapore's Lesbian Cultures and New Media |
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Sabdha Charlton The internet has the unique advantages of providing an ease of access and diversity of material to the researcher, yet its structure and functioning also pose a series of disciplinary and political problems for analysis. In this paper I propose to explore the advantages of the internet as enabling not just research, but also the formation of the very cultures researched, in the context of English language fandom of yuri—that is, the series of mailing lists and web pages that take same-sex love (both implied in the texts, and invented or surmised by the fans) between female characters from Japanese anime and manga (animated films and comics) as their fan object. I will also try to unpack some of the difficulties and paradoxes of undertaking such research. Is the study of fan-based web pages and mailing lists ethnography or textual analysis, and how does this affect the methodological approaches appropriate for their analysis? How does one analyse an internet fan base that elides the cultural background, gender and sexuality of its participants, yet also reifies these categories in the object of their fandom? These questions do not have simple answers; nevertheless they are crucial issues that need to be considered when undertaking academic work in the age of the internet. Leigh Dale In Japan and Australia, much has been made of masculinity and its relationship to a relatively militaristic notion of nation and nationalism. More simply, masculinity has been central to representations of nation in both cultures. In this paper I wish to explore a particular and unusual dimension of the representation of masculinity: the linkage between homosexuality, suffering and eroticism. The paper will examine works by Mishima Yukio, particularly Confessions of a Mask, and by Christos Tsiolkas, in particular his novel The Jesus Man. It will be argued that that the relationship between suffering, sanctity and eroticism that is posited in Mishima and Tsiolkas' texts is an ontologically tautological one, in that the erotics of suffering are legitimated by being represented (re-presented) as sacred, drawing heavily on Christian iconography, but that the sacredness which is being claimed is not a reflection of immanence so much as it is the reflection of a desire to invert the overwhelming fear of the self's own evil that homosexual desire represents. The representation of the circulation of sado-masochistic images of suffering and eroticism, within each of these texts, are central to the broader representation of the suffering self. The paper will examine the circulation of representations of homosexuality, suffering and eroticism within and beyond each of these two texts. Romit Dasgupta In recent years a growing body of work has drawn attention to the interfaces between transnational cultural flows and configurations of 'queer' subjectivities in the Asia-Pacific region. As Audrey Yue notes in her paper on Wong Kar-Wai's 1997 film, Happy Together, this (what she names) transnational 'Queer (N) Asian' identity, often works to disrupt comfortable East/West, Local/Global binaries. The intersections (or lack of) between the 'local' and the 'global' in the negotiations and representations of these 'Queer (N) Asian identities has been interrogated and problematized quite adequately by a variety of writers. However, what needs to be addressed in greater depth are the re-configurations of 'Queer (N) Asian' identities, in the context of cultural flows within the region; in particular, the ways in which movements of 'diasporic' popular culture within the region engage with 'local' queer identities in crafting identities which are neither purely 'local' nor 'global'. The influence of cultural flows out of Japan in mediating between the 'global' and the 'local' in the context of (largely 'mainstream') popular culture forms in the Asia-Pacific has been commented upon quite extensively—for instance, there is quite an extensive body of literature on the appeal of J-Pop, Japanese television dramas, manga and anime, Japanese fashions among consumers in the region. However, discussion of the influence of Japanese popular culture on representations of queer identities in the region has yet to be addressed. This paper discusses one specific example of this interface in a 'Queer (N) Asian' context—the 1998 Hong Kong production, Bishonen, a film which draws quite heavily on the genre of Japanese shojo manga representations of male-male intimacy, in articulating a diasporic 'Queer (N) Asian' identity. Alvin Koh This paper will interrogate the way 'Asian' as a powerful symbolic marker of 'race' circulates in personal advertisements (culled from Pinkboard, and various newsletters such as MSO etc.) in the Australian context. Traditional analyses of personal advertisements have focused on the ways 'gay Asian male' or GAMs have produced ways of resisting against pernicious stereotypes that discursively construct the 'Asian male' as feminised with relation to the Western Self. This paper will differ from traditional analyses by utilising Judith Butler's notion of the subject as not only one that opposes external forces of oppression, but is also one that is always and already constituted by those forces of oppression itself. If Butler is right, then monolithic notions of 'resistance' must be carefully reconsidered. Traditional analyses of personal advertisements also often neglect to mention the processes by which the investigating subject is imbricated in and constitutive of the project of resistance itself – that is, the investigating subject has a personal stake in reading off gestures of resistance from those advertisements that they are critiquing. Drawing on the insights provided by Gayatri Spivak's work on 'strategic reading,' my intention is to critique this complicity of the 'reading' theorist with the act of resistance itself, which would then have the result of creating a deferment of any judgement on the level of 'subversiveness' of an ad because of the impossibility of exhaustively charting the 'true' effects of that ad. I will, myself, 'read' several advertisements, not only to discover moments of resistance against and of complicity with hegemonic discourses of power at large, but also to demonstrate moments of ambivalence in the 'forced readings' of my reading strategy. Fran Martin This paper analyses the popularity of Taiwan-based Mandarin pop singer Sandee Chan within the emergent public designated by the neologism nütongzhi, a sexual category that is arguably a hybrid produced out of a dialogue between local conditions in Taiwan and the globally mobile Euro-American identity 'lesbian'. Framed by an understanding of recent transformations in musical and sexual cultures in Taiwan as a function of the interaction of local, regional and global cultures, this paper is especially concerned to situate Sandee's music within the local contexts of its production and consumption. Drawing on a small-scale ethnographic survey of Sandee's nütongzhi fans in Taiwan, the paper attempts to offer a 'microscopic' perspective on the experience of Sandee's music by her nütongzhi audience. The paper seeks to draw a parallel between the way nütongxinglian (female homosexuality) is spoken (or unspoken) in Sandee's music, and the conditions of nütongxinglian representability within Taiwan's popular culture more broadly. Engaging with recent scholarship on reticence (hanxu) as a representational mode firmly associated with tongxinglian (homosexuality),the paper argues that the lesbian reticence of Sandee and certain other Mandarin pop singers offers points of purchase for the elaboration of oppositional forms of sexuality that function, in this case, by exploiting both the ambivalence of reticence as a representational mode, and the pervasiveness of Mandarin pop as a cultural form. Alan McKee What happens when a nation-state meets a Queer nation? This paper and screening looks at examples of pornography made in Australia, comparing their national status as 'Queer' objects with their national status as 'Australian' objects. Kangaroos, koalas and emus may be instantly recognisable symbols of Australia, but do they remain so when viewed by two topless young men in a four-wheel drive, as a prelude to homosexual congress? The Sydney Opera House symbolises a cultural affectation that has been important for overcoming Australian cultural cringe, but how is opera articulated to homosexuality when it is merely a backdrop for cocksucking? How Australian can gay sex be? And how gay can Australia be? And what does any of this have to do with transnational flows of capital? By showing gratuitous and salacious clips from the gay porn videos Australian Sunsets, Going Down Under, Jackaroos and Manly Beach, this paper will at least ask some of these questions. Mark McLelland Pornography in Japan is less segregated than in Anglophone countries and a wide variety of sexual imagery is apparent throughout the media, including diverse representations of male homosexuality. This presentation looks at two specific sites where images of male homosexuality are particularly common: gay magazines and videos and, more surprisingly, girls' comics. I suggest that for Japanese women, male homosexuality is tied up with notions of the foreign. Many of the stories and scenarios are situated in distant, 'other' places and the 'beautiful boys' who fall in love with each other are drawn in such a way to look, if not exactly 'Western, ' at least 'not Japanese.' In pornographic images and stories created by and for Japanese gay men, however, foreign locations and foreigners themselves are largely absent. Featured instead are many representations of 'the traditional Japanese man' that evoke nostalgia for scenarios from Japan's homosocial past: the Shrine festival, the boys' school, the playing field. 'Authentic' Japanese props, such as the fundoshi (loin-cloth) are common signifiers of this Japaneseness. To some extent Japanese gay men's desire is directed at images from the past where foreigners are absent. Japanese women's fantasies of male homosexual desire, however, are frequently concerned with characters and scenarios that if not always foreign, are at least not Japan(ese). This paper explores reasons why this might be so. Dorje Norbu This paper outlines confluences in constructions of self between Queer Theory and Buddhism. It poses the possibility that, when teamed with hypertext technology, this can facilitate a radical rewriting of the literary subject that embraces Queer notions of subjectivity as fluid and polysemous and Buddhist notions of self as somehow 'empty' and therefore open to multiple possibilities. Hypertext has a 'multidimensional' quality that can be deployed in this rewriting to enunciate a self that is plural and receptive. This re-enunciated subject can be understood to come into being through dialogue/s, rather than through a process of exclusion or negation that constitutes subjects as either Other or its opposite. Buddhist constructions of the self further destabilize notions of a fixed exclusive 'position' to the point where, in line with Derrida's and Cixous' philosophy, there is a refusal of any single reference point or position - traditionally perceived as in constant conflict with its opposite. In this scenario the self opens up as the very 'field' in which dialogue/s occur, a kind of referenceless or positionless 'everythingness'. This rewritten subjectivity dissolves the ancient self/other conflict in favor of an incessant field of open dialogue/s that is in a constant dance of dissolution, reformulation and dissolution. This incessant constantly shifting 'field' refuses containment and offers a multitude of possibilities. In this conceptualization what we call the self, subjectivity, or a speaking position is repeatedly exposed to its own non-existence and so the legitimacy (indeed inseparability) of all 'voices' is foregrounded. It is intended the conference 'presentation' will demonstrate this rewriting in the context of literary narrative techniques, modes of address (speaking positions) and the hypertext page ('lay out') using a collection of short prose writing - Dialogue/s by Dallas Angguish - as a case study. The case study will show that literary hypertext can 'carry' a multiplicity of speaking positions that is in accordance with both Queer and Buddhist notions of self. Wendy Pearson and Susan Knabe For the last two decades, the standard response to 'slash' (homoerotic fan fiction) in academia has been to concentrate on who is writing it, and why. A variety of critics, including Henry Jenkins, Constance Penley, and Camille Bacon-Smith, would have us believe that slash is a particular genre of fan-fiction with a very specific appeal to heterosexual women, who have created for themselves a specifically woman-only sexual space by 'queering' the bodies of putatively heterosexual male television characters (such as Kirk and Spock or Mulder and Krycek). Recent studies, however, including separate surveys by Laura Akers and Kellie Boyd, indicate that heterosexual women are no longer the huge majority they were once thought to be, and that slash writers and readers are as likely to identify as bisexual or lesbian, or even to be gay men. At the same time, within the confines of fandom itself, an escalating series of discussions and arguments have dealt with the question of whether—and why—some slash is homophobic in its treatment of the two (usually) male figures who are the centre of any given story. Finally, it has tended to be taken as a given—by critics as varied as Penley and Samuel Delany—that whatever slash is and however overtly sexual the writing, it is quite different in intent, content and intended a audience from gay male pornography. Our intention in this paper is to look at slash, which is a worldwide phenomenon, although primarily concentrated in English-speaking countries, in the particular context of Australia. In doing so, we will be looking at the question of who the writers and readers of slash in Australia are, which television shows they are choosing to 'queer' (usually by questioning the presumptive heteronormativity of the most 'masculine' of tv icons, such as cops), and why and how they are revising the expected passive reception of television culture in their fiction. What exactly are slashers in Australia writing? Is their writing primarily romantic, simply reproducing a heteronormative paradigm with two male protagonists replacing the usual male-female dynamic? Or is something more complex, more conflicted, and more inconsistent going on here? Is the stereotype that slash is purely a playground for middle-class heterosexual women true? Or is the genre open to a wider and more varied demographic? To what extent has the arrival of Internet publishing (replacing the much more limited circulation of printed fanzines) altered and perhaps globalized the genre itself? And if slash is really so very different from gay male writing, why have some slash writers gone on to make careers as professional writers of gay male fiction? It is thus our intention to demonstrate that the slash community in Australia is alive and well and that it includes a widely-ranging demographic whose various fictions range from the sappiest and most heteronormative of romances to the most graphic and detailed depictions of gay male sexuality. Greg Leong
—William Yang (Japan, 1994)
This complex idea of hating your own generalised racial grouping is complicated by the strict codes determining erotic desirability amongst gay men in Anglophone countries. There are sharply delineated networks within the so-called 'gay community' in Australia. Because the model of the perfect man, as perpetrated in mass culture and in gay sexual hierarchies, is Caucasian, many gay Asians have developed a sexually racist attitude against their own racial type. This paper provides a perspective, often invisible to the dominant culture, in which to locate the work of William Yang. It positions the factor of one's ethnicity within the context of the personal, often economic, and certainly racial politics of gay desire in Australia. Claire Maree Language users repeatedly and reflexively negotiate complex contexts wherein positioning and performing the complexity of their multiple identities. The current paper examines the negotiative strategies employed by speakers of Japanese and centers on speech of women who identify as lesbian, and who, in a continuous process of shifting identification with same-sex sexuality, negotiate the terrain of heterosexist gendered language norms. In particular, this paper discusses the negotiative strategies of Sayuri and Oka, two speakers who employ onê kotoba—a speech style generally used by men and viewed as a parody of stereotypical women's language- and who are subsequently referred to as onna-onê by their peers. Both Sayuri and Oka, partners at the time of the roundtable discussion undertaken as part of this study, speak extensively of their use of onê kotoba. In particular, Oka, who describes herself as not being 'overtly feminine', says she prefers to use the more informal atashi (stereotypically feminine first-person pronoun) because in doing so she can let people know that she is a 'girl'. Oka and Sayuri's metadiscursive explanations of their self-reference choices illustrate the complex relationship between the speaker's image of self, the gendered norms of the Japanese self-reference system, and contemporary cultural expectations. Our discussion of onê kotoba as used by self-identified lesbian speakers, will underline the necessity to attend to coercive heteropatriarchal femininity posited by Japanese socioculture when conducting research into gender and language issues in the Japanese language context. Sean Metzger Influenced by the American western, Kurosawa's samurai films paved the way for Hong Kong's kung fu cinema; Tom Dey's Shanghai Noon follows in the wake of these uneven cultural exchanges by explicitly melding genres, placing screwball/action superstar Jackie Chan in the Wild West. In this talk, I want to explore the consequences of this 'East/ West' collision. On the one hand, the film reinscribes the dichotomy of Chinese tradition versus western modernity. Indeed, Jackie Chan's particular action sequences, focused largely on the use and avoidance of his queue, cites Tsui Hark's Once Upon a Time in China, which is also about the meeting of Qing culture with the modern technologies of the United States. Shanghai Noon, however, shows how the labor of the Chinese diaspora helped fuel industrialization in the American West. Placing the bachelor Chinese communities into the Western also queers the genre. Adding this third element into the homosociality of the 'Cowboy and Indian' narrative raises several questions. How does the male Chinese diaspora figure into the erotics of the Western? How are these erotic forces linked to the tradition versus modernity split between East and West? How are these cultural divisions embodied through the queue and how do the particular representations of Chinese men affect native American, white and Latino images in Shanghai Noon? Drawing on historical work by Charles McClain and Jonathan Spence as well as the cultural studies of Dorinne Kondo, Robert Lee and Kobena Mercer, my talk will address these questions. Baden Offord Sexuality, queer subjectivity, identity and human rights are presently being taken up as crucial sites of ethical intervention by Indonesians and Singaporeans on the Internet. This paper examines how the Internet is helping to create new spaces of intersubjective and intercultural communication that address the issue of non-normative sexualities and the sense of belonging in society. As Laurence Wai-Teng Leong argues with regard to Singapore, the Internet, together with globalisation, is challenging the state's silence on civil rights and developing an awareness of gay and lesbian issues. The Internet, according to Alan Sondheim (1997: 6) 'represents a deep re-alignment of human community, one which circumvents bordersS' It is a critical space that permits both 'pain and empathy (10).' It is in fact a place of intersubjective conversations and dialogue, postings, news, stories and all manner of analysis. This paper takes up these concerns by interrogating specific web sites such as and 'Yawning Bread' to illustrate, through discourse analysis appropriate to the properties of the Internet, how the non-centralised chaos of cyberspace creates new ways of belonging and participation. R. Jeffrey Ringer Grounded in a variety of constructionist and pragmatic theories, my work is based on the belief that relationships occur as human beings interact with one another within historical, cultural, and material conditions. As we interact with one another we enact episodes which influence and are influenced by our relational ideologies. Queer men's relationships exist outside of the dominant relational ideologies (heterosexuality, monogamy, duality, etc.); thus, they find themselves enacting episodes and relationships without significant models to guide them. I am interested in the processes by which such men are able to invent, construct, produce, and 'do' their relationships. As a part of a long-term study of how queer men relate to each other, I interviewed men in eleven partnerships in Taiwan in March of 2001. Three of those partnerships involved men from different countries: Taiwan and the US, Taiwan and the Netherlands, and Taiwan and France. In this paper/presentation, I will describe each of these three relationships and identify the ideologies that are emerging in them. Specifically, I will analyse the ways these couples manage the cultural issues they face in their relationships. Audrey Yue This paper presents a study of the cultural practices of emails and pagers by lesbians in Singapore, its diaspora and its cyberspace to show how mobile lesbian cultures are constituted transnationally and subculturally. It argues that the consumption of different technologies produces different sexual identities that expose the politics of class. 'Paging "New Asia"' highlights technology as a mark of the modern New Asian queer present, as a device that attends to the exigency of how a community makes itself present by calling out the stakes and challenges involved in the creation of new identities and belongings. |
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