Session Title: Queer Theory (Session number 38)
Time: 10:30-12:20am, July 7, 2004
Place: Room-06, 2nd Floor, Jianguo Garden Hotel
Participants:
Li Yin He (Institute of Sociology, China Academy of Social Sciences)
Topic:
Queer Theory
Queer theory is a new theory of sexuality in 1990s. In the last decade, a new identity of queer and a new theory of it had been developed from the politics and theory of GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transsexual). Queer theory is quite popular now in both sexual politics and academic circle. Queer theory is not a theory within one academic discipline, but is a theory of several academic disciplines. Queer theory is a position outside the mainstream culture: queers and their theory cannot find the position in the main stream, and they would not try to find the position in the main stream neither. As an identity, the concept of queer would include all kinds of persons who cannot fit in the main stream and so called normal gender and sexual norms, rules, and orders. The concept of queer is the _expression of nonstraight in the culture. The concept includes the opinion of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, and other nonstraight values. This paper tried to introduce, describe, and discuss the main opinions and content of queer theory.
In the past twenty years, a school of thought called "Queer theory" has blossomed in the arena of sociology in the United States and other English-speaking countries. " Queer theory" has been imported and introduced to China. Can the US-born "Queer theory" be "Chinese"? What is or ought to be the relations between "Queer Theory" and the Law? As a social product and construct, the law is used as a vehicle to regulate "queerness". Can the law be, in turn, queered? Will "Queer Theory" have implications for Chinese laws? In this paper, I would make explorations into those questions. First, I will discuss the major tenets of Queer theory and outline its historical context and debate its "Americanness". Second, I will describe the doctrinal debate surrounding Queer theory and its relationship to existing social, political, and legal theories. In particular, I will consider the identity-politics issues central to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, or transsexual. Finally, I will explore Queer theory's implications for Chinese laws in a globalizing and localizing world.
Josephine Ho (Professor and Coordinator, Center for the Study of Sexualities, National Central University, Chungli, Taiwan)
Topic: From Anti-Trafficking to Social Discipline
Gail Hershatter has noted that prostitution has not always dominated public discourse or attention, yet at certain critical moments, it may suddenly become the center of social concern as it is taken as "a metaphor, a medium of articulation" in which various emerging social forces and social anxieties play out their displaced existence. As such, prostitution, as a recognizable "social problem," may signify very different practices and populations and involve different ramifications as the social context changes. In the present paper, I would like to trace such a recent process of change through which the anti-trafficking discourse, understood in the Taiwanese context as the eradication of a specific form of underage prostitution, came to articulate different sets of parties and interests; as well as the process of how, as the anti-trafficking cause quickly lost its relevance in the fast changing social reality of Taiwan, it has now transformed itself into an intricate web of social discipline that also embodies "a vision of global governance."
Ching-Ning Wang (Graduate Center, City University of New York)
Topic:
Buy a PC, otherwise Get Married!: What the phenomenon of LaLa Teaches Us?
Since 1978 when the open door's policy was announced there, China has gone through significant economic restructuring under global capitalism, shifting China to an information economy and to related social and cultural changes. This paper will explore a theoretically significant but under-explored phenomenon in China's transition to a global information economy and analyzes its impact on society. This paper will focuse on the phenomenon of lala, a Chinese female subculture, affected by homo desire, that has identified itself through internet use. The research draws from my participant observation of websites, mailing lists, and among groups engaged in gay's activism both in China and U.S.