TY - JOUR
T1 - Reconfiguring queer Asia as disjunctive modernities
T2 - Notes on the subjective production of working-class gay men in Hong Kong
AU - Yu, Ting Fai
N1 - Funding Information:
An earlier version of this article was presented at a seminar organized by the French Centre for Research on Contemporary China (March 22, 2018, Hong Kong). I thank Eric Florence for the invitation to present and Benny Lu for being the discussant who offered constructive comments. I also thank Jerry He Xiyao for his editorial suggestions. I moreover wish to thank the participants in my study.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2020/5/11
Y1 - 2020/5/11
N2 - Informed by the framing of queer Asia as disjunctive modernities, this article argues for the analytic relevance of class to Hong Kong queer culture amid proliferating sexual progress. Based on ethnographic research concerning a support group for middle-aged, working-class gay men in a non-governmental organization (NGO), the findings demonstrate how their understanding and experiences of class were displaced into the culturally specific discourses of aging and generational difference. By examining the ideological work underlying three sets of local discourses (namely, generational experiences, urban redevelopment, and industrial transformation), the analysis reveals a temporal logic of class relation that governed the informants’ class displacements and, in turn, safeguarded the reproduction of inequalities in their lives. This article concludes by highlighting the interferential potential of class for understanding the queer cultural and subjective formations in other East Asian societies that went through similar processes of postwar economic development and class formation.
AB - Informed by the framing of queer Asia as disjunctive modernities, this article argues for the analytic relevance of class to Hong Kong queer culture amid proliferating sexual progress. Based on ethnographic research concerning a support group for middle-aged, working-class gay men in a non-governmental organization (NGO), the findings demonstrate how their understanding and experiences of class were displaced into the culturally specific discourses of aging and generational difference. By examining the ideological work underlying three sets of local discourses (namely, generational experiences, urban redevelopment, and industrial transformation), the analysis reveals a temporal logic of class relation that governed the informants’ class displacements and, in turn, safeguarded the reproduction of inequalities in their lives. This article concludes by highlighting the interferential potential of class for understanding the queer cultural and subjective formations in other East Asian societies that went through similar processes of postwar economic development and class formation.
KW - compressed modernity
KW - East Asian modernization
KW - ethnography
KW - gay men
KW - Hong Kong
KW - qualitative research
KW - queer Asia as disjunctive modernities
KW - sexual progress
KW - social class
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85059892738&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/00918369.2018.1560126
DO - 10.1080/00918369.2018.1560126
M3 - Article
C2 - 30633721
AN - SCOPUS:85059892738
SN - 0091-8369
VL - 67
SP - 863
EP - 884
JO - Journal of Homosexuality
JF - Journal of Homosexuality
IS - 6
ER -