Networking Asia Pacific: queer film festivals and the spatiotemporal politics of inter-referencing

ABSTRACT

Expanding on the critique of Euro-America-centrism in knowledge production, this article examines three spatiotemporal hierarchies through the inter-referencing practices of Asia Pacific Queer Film Festival Alliance. First, through the analysis of the documentary short Lady Eva and its circulation, I look at how the network opens up the issue of Pacific indigeneity in the transpacific context, which has the potential to unsettle the existing epistemic structures that rest upon the binary of West/non-West or white/Indigenous. Second, I investigate how the queer film festival alliance serves as sites for the articulation of queer rights, which sometimes cast a progressivist temporal narrative based on a hierarchical arrangement of geographical places. Third, through the case of ShanghaiPRIDE Film Festival, I examine how anti-institutionalism in film festival organizing offers a critique of gay-male dominated queer film festivals and the capitalist developmental logic that emphasizes profit and financial viability. By doing so, I scrutinize how the spatiotemporal hierarchies embedded in the film festival network complicate the understanding of inter-referencing as citation, collaboration, and competition. At the same time, I use inter-referencing to further the discussion of spatial politics in film festival studies by highlighting the spatiotemporal hierarchies.     

Shifting spaces,frozen frames: trajectories of queer politics in contemporary India

Abstract

This paper is a comparative reading of two Malayalam films The Journey (Sancharram, 2004) and The Wandering Bird Does Not Cry (Deshadana Kili Karayarilla, 1986) as representative of differing trajectories of queer politics in the Kerala public sphere. It uses an analysis of the representative strategies of these two films, to interrogate the limits of a universal language of sexual identity politics. The paper places the two films in the different historical contexts in which they are produced, and deploys a film from an earlier time period to problematize some of the assumptions of contemporary queer politics. For this purpose it undertakes a close reading of the cinematic codes of both these films, especially the spatial arrangements in the films. I argue that the location of Sancharram in the LGBT discourse in India and abroad makes it so enmeshed in setting up an established meaning for the term ‘queer’ that the process of queering becomes one of stabilizing a chosen form of desire as the ideal one. In this process of setting up a stable trajectory for queer desire, it also freezes the spatial and social terrains of Kerala. The process of queering that Deshadana Kili Karayarilla undertakes is not one that attempts to set up a particular subject position as the queer subject position. It sets out to trouble the naturalized construction of the heterosexual couple and injects a sense of instability into the social sphere itself. The paper examines how some of the taken‐for‐granted assumptions of transnational queer politics, like the celebration of visible bodies, gets radically questioned when we turn to non‐metropolitan sites of analysis. It aims to look at how cultural texts can embody different modes of sexual politics, as activists struggle to coin strategies to articulate the political possibilities of non‐normative sexual practices in Kerala today.     

Archiving queer feelings in Hong Kong

Abstract

This article argues for the revitalization of a productive tension between ‘queer’ and ‘theory’ and underscores its necessity for a study of ‘local queer theory.’ While there is an apparent lack of academic queer theory in Hong Kong, there are numerous examples of writings that advance theoretical positions, albeit in unfamiliar guises. The article analyzes three examples of queer writings by Hong Kong authors, penned between 1984 and 2000. Focusing on the texts’ archival effect and affective expression, the analysis demonstrates that these writings form an archive of queer feelings. As a repository of the discomfort and anxiety that are constitutive of queer lives, these writings can offer fruitful interventions into current theoretical debates. The article concludes with a call for more creative and irreverent – in short, queerer – ways of localizing the global phenomenon of queer theory.     

Sissies online: Taiwanese male queers performing sissinesses in cyberspaces 1

Abstract

The Internet has led to the creation of a variety of virtual worlds, which inspire and empower local male queers, through their virtual reality, relative safety and increased accessibility, to perform their sissy selves, which, though at different levels, might need to be suppressed in real life. The virtual ‘sissinesses’ performed by local male queers may be perceived as multiple ongoing processes of interactions as well as a variety of contested sites of power relations, through and within which the queers interact with other users and Internet technologies. Moreover, their virtual sissinesses become involved with the socio‐cultural, psychic and material conditions that incessantly intersect with one another. All these conditions and interactions thereby come to confront the reflexive agencies of the queers in order to negotiate diverse, ever‐changing sissy identities and representations in cyberspaces. More significantly, their virtual sissinesses are characterised by resisting the regimes of heterosexism, gender dimorphism, biological determinism, heterosexual masculine supremacy and compulsory gay masculinity. It is through these resisting implications that they have commenced an era of online sissy queer politics.     

Facing history,resolving disputes,working towards peace in East Asia: a statement by the Minjian East Asia Forum

Preface ?Concerned with the escalation of territorial disputes in East Asia since July, we proposed setting up the Minjian East Asia Forum (the Forum hereafter) on October 6, 2012, serving as a platform for East Asian people to face regional disputes and exchange opinions together. Minjian is a Chinese term that has counterparts in Japanese, as minkan, and in Korean as mingan, based on the same Chinese characters. Although used differently with different meanings in each context, minjian, as used here, refers to the non-governmental, popular voices and organizations, initiated by the people. Although the Forum was started to respond to and engage in the recent territorial disputes, it was not created out of thin air, but on the foundation of East Asian solidarities built by many predecessors over the last 30 years.1 “In the last two decades, we have participated in the minjian, read here as people-based and hence non-governmental, solidarity movement of various kinds—including Asia Regional Network for Alternatives (ARENA, 1980s), the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies: Movements (2000–), the East Asia Critical Journals Conference (2006–), and West Heavens: India China Summit on Social Thought (2010–). We also established the Inter-Asia School (2011–) and organized the first Asian Circle of Thought in Shanghai (2012) as well as the Modern Asian Thought project (2012–). In doing this work, we follow the footsteps of Ashis Nandy, Muto Ichiyo, Chen Yingzhen, Paik Nak-Chung, and the late Mizoguchi Yuzo. In moving around Asia, we created a linkage between circles of critical intellectuals and movement, and by talking to friends in the circle of thought, we came to realize that within the entire expanse of Asia, East Asia is the region that experiences the greatest difficulty in stepping outside of the Cold War division and in reimagining the region as a collectivity. Especially when China and India are fast developing their economies, we must be more aware of the social contradictions and inequalities that are deepening in the region, as well as the role each state plays in the global inter-state system. In this complex and volatile context, we must try to find a better road to development—for public good, justice, equality, and world peace. Unfortunately, the party politics in each state has blocked the proactive interaction within the region for its own interest. Even when East Asian states are imagining an East Asian community, a common platform for civil societies to communicate and address issues that are of regional significance is achingly absent. In this sense, our imagination of ‘minjian East Asia’ is a people-based, non-governmental platform for regional dialogue that attempts to check and balance the exchange of interest based on party politics, and monitor the governments, preventing them from making arbitrary decisions that will escalate tension and threaten peace in the region” (Chen et al. 2013 Chen, Kuan-Hsing, Chih-Ming Wang and Qingya Hu. 2013. Minjian East Asia Forum: feelings and imaginations. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 14(2) ,, this issue[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]). We expect the Forum (with the secretariat to be based in Seoul) to become a people-to-people network that will continue to extend beyond borders and express people's voices, fostering the steady development of peace in Asia and the world through communication, conversation, and collaboration.     

Life is not complete without critique: Chua Beng Huat as model

This essay outlines an intellectual portrait of Chua Beng Huat and offers a critical appreciation of his contributions as an academic, a scholar, and an intellectual. I highlight key biographical details: his family upbringing in Bukit Ho Swee, schooling in the Chinese and English mediums, higher education and academic experience in Canada, his return to Singapore, and serving as a sociology faculty at the National University of Singapore, which he made a home base for inter-Asia studies. I discuss his pedagogical approach, which extends to his research and public engagement. In reviewing his works, I focus on the theme of communitarianism as a basis of political legitimacy in East Asia, with housing provision in Singapore as a prime example. His project presents an alternative to Western liberal democracy taken as the universal bedrock of political modernity. I characterize it as the recuperation of the social in the face of capitalist modernity, which is conducive to atomization and corrosive of solidarity. Yet, he projects the possibilities of a more politically liberalized communitarianism. What he offers is not a set of ready answers that reconcile Marx’s “realm of necessity” and “realm of freedom,” but a lucid exposition of the tensions between the two realms under contemporary conditions.     

Cruising Mat Motor: Malay biker masculinity and queer desire in/through KL Menjerit

Abstract

This paper examines the construction of working‐class Mat Motor (Malay biker) masculinity and queer desire in/through KL Menjerit, a commercial biker film that exudes the unmistakably aura of working‐class kejantanan (masculinity). Specifically, I focus on how the film – or more precisely the ‘queer moments’ it contains – resonates in ways that are not necessarily obvious to the disinterested heterosexual public eye. The discussion takes into account both filmic elements and the sexual geography of Kuala Lumpur (KL), where shifting biker spaces sometimes intersect with homosexual cruising sites. My argument is that the film’s representation of the Mat Motor protagonist as unbendingly straight and heterosexually jantan – while imaginably gratifying to the core audience of Mat Motors – actually belies the opposite reality of KL’s ‘forgotten’ underside, where gender and sexuality are much more fluid and malleable than is sanctioned by society and the state.     

An alternative route towards socialization of democracy in Asia: review of Liberalism Disavowed: Communitarianism and State Capitalism in Singapore by Chua Beng Huat

The contribution of Chua’s Liberalism Disavowed is very large in that it shows how the hegemony of the PAP is working and resisting liberalism, especially in the everyday world of Singaporeans. It re-interprets the origin of public support for the PAP by focusing on its embedded social democratic origin. However, we differ with Chua because we think that the PAP interpreted liberalism very narrowly and rejected it. The strong state, which overwhelms civil society, emerged, interpreting democracy centered on outputs such as stability of economy or higher standard of people’s livelihood rather than inputs such as civic participation or interaction of diverse civil society actors, and openness of the state bureaucracy to civil society. Singapore has sacrificed freedom for political unity. We derive our opinion from of the need to integrate democracy and the social and co-evolution of freedom and equality. We believe that alternative democratic models should be based on the socialization, rather than the nationalization of politics.     

China as method

This is one of Mizoguchi Yūzō’s famous polemical essays in which he rethinks the problems of Japanese sinology. He contends that China has been essential to constructing Japanese identity and consequently Japanese sinologists developed what he calls a “sinology without China.” That is Japanese sinologists projected a subjective image of China and such visions of China said more about Japan than they did about China. In contrast to this, Mizoguchi attempts to outline a sinology that takes China as method and uncovers the internal dynamics of Chinese history. Towards the end of the essay, he also discusses the ideological implications of such a shift in focus. In short, previous sinologists often took something like Western modernity as a method and forced China into this framework. Against this, Mizoguchi underscores the specific logics of Chinese history and hopes then to construct a new universality grounded in specific spatio-temporal logics around the world.     

Imagining Malaya,practising multiculturalism: the Malayan consciousness of Singapore Chinese intellectuals in the 1950s

Abstract

Singapore in the 1950s had undergone a series of transitions, from 150?years of British colonial rule, followed by Japanese Occupation in the Second World War, to the anti-colonial independence movement, and presented a multifaceted, complex and active state in all social, political and cultural aspects. The Chinese intellectual circle as a community mainly comprised teachers, students, alumni, etc, of the Chinese middle schools established after the War, and intellectuals from the cultural sphere and press industry. This community played an important role in the anti-colonial resistance and movements throughout the 1950s. In the historical context of the struggle for autonomy and independence, the Chinese intellectuals in Singapore—originally as part of Malaya—were promoters and activists in the construction of the imagination of a Malayan nation, as part of the wave of post-colonial struggles and movements taking place in colonies around the world after the War. As such, how the Chinese intellectuals of that period embraced multiculturalism as a mean of practice, to participate in the imagination of a Malayan nation, is a topic worth revisiting.     

Between the public intellectual and the scholar: decolonization and some post-independence initiatives in African higher education

This article focuses on epistemological decolonization, including knowledge production and its institutional locus – the university – in the post-independence African context. The article begins by problematizing both the concept and the institutional history of the university, in its European and African contexts, to underline the specifically modern character of the university as we know it and its genesis in post-Renaissance Europe. Against this background, the article traces post-independence reform of universities in Africa, which is unfolding in two waves: the first on access, Africanization, generating a debate between rights and justice; and the second on institutional reform, epitomized by the debate around disciplinarity. At the same time, the notions of excellence and relevance have functioned as code words, each signaling a different trajectory in the historical development of the university. Lastly, the article explores the role and tension between the public intellectual and the scholar from the perspective of decolonization.     

People's security: Okinawa's anti-bases movement

Abstract

The evolution of moral panics is dependent on the particular social context and the ability of certain issues to trigger concern within society. In this paper, the authors have employed a cross‐comparative study of the heavy metal music subcultures in Singapore and Malaysia to understand the differences in the issues that generate such panics based on the socio‐political context of each country and its current concerns. Although the youth involved in both cases are marginalised male Malays, the framing of their alleged deviance and criminality permits, in the case of Singapore, only a limited possibility for moral panic creation given the conservative socio‐political governance that limits allegations such as ‘Satanism’. In the case of Malaysia, where a ‘large‐scale’ moral panic involving black metal emerged in 2001, the recent trend towards Islamisation gave fodder for the condemnation of black metal based on the allegations of the anti‐Islamic behaviour of Muslim youth involved in the black metal scene. In both cases, such groups were exploited by parties claiming to defend the social fabric of the moral majority, but in the latter case it took on grave implications due to the extent of the state and public response. This paper thus argues that the framing of these moral panics is an important component determining the relative ‘success’ of the panic or its ability to capture public and state imaginings.     

The politics of imagining Asia: a genealogical analysis

Abstract

Following the recent trends of globalization and regionalization, the idea of Asia has been revived in political, economic, and cultural fields. This essay examines some of the various uses of this idea in modern East Asian and especially Chinese history. The essay consists of four parts. Part One discusses the derivativeness of the idea of Asia, that is, how this idea developed from modern European history, especially the nineteenth‐century European narrative of ‘World History,’ and it points out how the early modern Japanese ‘theory of shedding Asia’ derived from this narrative. Part Two studies the relationship between the idea of Asia and two forms of populism against the background of the Chinese and Russian revolutions – one, exemplified by Russian Narodism, attempted to use Asian particularity to challenge modern capitalism; the other, represented by Sun Yat‐sen, attempted to construct a nation‐state according to a socialist revolutionary program, and to develop agricultural capitalism under the particular social conditions of Asia. Part Three considers the differences and tensions between the ‘Great Asia‐ism’ of Chinese revolutionaries such as Sun and the Japanese idea of East Asia (Tōyō),and it discusses the need to overcome the categories of nation‐state and international relations in order to understand the question of Asia. Part Four discusses the need to go beyond early modern maritime‐centered accounts, nationalist frameworks, and Eurocentrism in re‐examining the question of Asia through historical research by focusing on the particular legacies of Asia and Toyo (such as the tributary system) and the problems of ‘early modernity.’     

Acculturation orientations and religious identity as predictors of Anglo-Australians’ attitudes towards Australian Muslims

Poll studies have shown an increase in Anglo-Australians’ negative attitudes towards Australian Muslims. Such studies, however, by their nature present Anglo-Australians as a relatively unified group, making a limited scientific contribution to the understanding of intergroup relations. The present study aimed at revealing differences within Anglo-Australians by examining the extent to which their acculturation orientations and religious identity play a role in differentiating the levels of positive and negative attitudes they hold towards Australian Muslims. A total of 170 second year University students (116 females and 54 males) with a mean age of 22.09 (SD = 5.98) participated in the study. Generally, findings revealed that while Integrationist and Individualist were the most endorsed acculturation orientations, Assimilationist and Segregationist emerged the least, and participants recorded more positive attitudes towards Muslims than negative attitudes. Additionally, Integrationist and Individualist orientations were positively related to positive attitudes and negatively related to negative attitudes; the reverse was the case for Assimilationist and Segregationist orientations. Religious identity of Anglo-Australians predicted positive attitudes towards Australian Muslims but did not predict negative attitudes.     

The Malayan vision of Lim Chin Siong: unity,non-violence,and popular sovereignty

Lim Chin Siong was the undisputed political leader of the anticolonial and Malayan left-wing in Singapore until his detention without trial in 1963 ended his political career. That he had a major impact on Singapore’s decolonisation is beyond dispute – indeed, both Tunku Abdul Rahman and Lee Kuan Yew formulated their merger policy specifically in response to Lim’s politics and his values. Yet Lim remains a poorly understood figure because of a lack of sources and a historiography written almost entirely from his opponents’ perspectives. Reassessing existing literature in view of recently declassified British archives, this essay pieces together Lim’s articulation of three tenets in the political thinking that guided his tactics for social mobilisation: anticolonial unity, non-violence, and popular sovereignty. Lim put these principles into practice with great success, becoming the leader of the largest and most formative nationalist movement Singapore has ever known. Understanding Malayan nationalism in Singapore – and its successor, Singaporean nationalism – is thus impossible without understanding Lim Chin Siong.     

Diaspora as method: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies and the Asian Australian Studies Research Network

ABSTRACT

What is the place of the diasporas within the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies movement, and how can Asian diasporas in the West contribute to Inter-Asia's intellectual project of “problematising Asia”? Developing a notion of diaspora as method, this essay highlights the complementary relationship between the Asian Australian Studies Research Network and the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies network. It argues that the Inter-Asia network has much to gain from embracing the Asian Australian diaspora as an interlocutor with shared priorities and concerns, and that Asian Australian studies can also productively learn from Inter-Asia's alternative model of institutionalisation, thereby expanding its theoretical and methodological frames of reference.     

Global Activist Network involving Asia: global continuation and evolution in Japan

Since Seattle 1999, plenty of summit protests around WTO, G8/20, IMF, WB, COP, and so on happened in each of the different summit sites in the last decade. Such incidents were amazingly accepted because of their mass actions and widespread networks of activists sustaining a series of mass actions. As some researchers argue, those of generating networks are based on horizontality and autonomy, and they have already prefigured a powerful model for (re)organizing society. However, on the other hand, some researchers also argue the major shortcomings. In theory, the ‘Global Activist Network’ has been constructed since Seattle, although in practice there has still been a serious spatial gap between the Western part of the world and the other side of the world. Actually, the global activist network has excluded Asia. However, in 2008, the G8 summit was held in Japan. This paper, thus, aims to show that the global activist network since Seattle, which was limited to Europe and North America, has expanded to involve Asia through the 2008 G8 summit in Japan. The 2000 G8 in Japan was right after the Seattle in 1999, yet, due to its single-issue and national character of the movements, globally expanding networks didn't reach Japan. However, movements around the 2003 anti-Iraq war brought in the autonomous character of the alter-globalization movement and referred to the legacy of autonomous activisms. During the 2008 G8, some autonomous activists in Japan took over the diversity of tactics and networks of activists inherited since PGA, DAN and ‘Dissent!’.     

Traditionalism and its impact on the administration of justice: the case of the Syariah Court of Singapore

Abstract

This paper examines, by way of case studies, the influence of traditionalism as a style of thought on the administration of Muslim law on divorce in the Syariah Court of Singapore. It focuses on the mode of its operation in the selection, construction and application of the law, and highlights its repercussions on the lives of parties in family breakdowns. The paper also touches upon the effects of traditionalism on the development of a more progressive legal culture and identifies measures that would alleviate the problem.     

Soeng Joeng Toi: opening fissures towards a platform and a bridge

ABSTRACT

In May of 2017, a space called Soeng Joeng Toi was established, gathering a variety of people to share and co-organise a space together. While it may be considered a relative newcomer, Soeng Joeng Toi’s appearance can be seen as an inevitable breakaway from the mainstream political, economic and cultural climate of a city like Guangzhou. From its initial planning stages to its official operation, much of Soeng Joeng Toi’s inspiration and methods have come from extensive exchange with independent spaces both in China and abroad, where mutual recognition of similar conditions and thinking of the commons have led these different spaces to continue developing in a sustained dialogue. This text, written from the perspective of two of Soeng Joeng Toi’s “co-proprietors,” introduces the beginnings of Soeng Joeng Toi, its current operations and experiences of connecting with others as well as explores the possibilities of a shared activism involving people from different fields and geographic regions.     

Between Asia and empire: infrastructures of encounter in the archive of war

ABSTRACT

In this essay, we stage a conversation about our experiences researching everyday histories of encounter between Asian and Asian diasporic subjects during the Pacific and Vietnam Wars. Through readings of materials from the archives of two empires, Britain and the United States, with bloody records of military intervention in east and south-east Asia, we show how wartime inter-Asian, Afro-Asian, and Asian diasporic geographies of relation overlapped with and animated one another, helping to (re)produce trans-local communities of affinity over space and time even as they also functioned as infrastructures for empire. Throughout, we reflect on the infrastructures – material, institutional, epistemological, affective – that make inter-referencing possible, both for our subjects and, importantly, for ourselves. If our archives resonate, what does this tell us about the trans-imperial durability of the intimate infrastructures we show taking shape in 1940s China and 1960s Vietnam respectively?