Graduation Thesis Muyang
Introduction
My interest in toxic and toxicity came from a conversation with an astrologer who learned about my powerful energies stemming from the Taurus-Scorpio axis. My teenage and romantic years were characterized by countless self-harms and controlling, toxic, dark love affairs, and he suggested that dealing with relationships with others was always at the forefront of my mind. Later he said that my Jupiter in the 11th house meant I could enjoy "a great gathering of different guests".
During the year and more I spent in the Netherlands, I have felt more lonely than at any other time in my life. Despite never having had many friends, I felt a great distance from my white classmates. My first two decades were spent under the strict censorship of the Chinese government, and suddenly the white institution PZI gave me the freedom to create. I had never encountered such a politically left-leaning group, and I thought I could be friends with them. Outside of PZI, I have no white friends. It's only when I enter the white space of PZI that white people suddenly step in and "save" me from my own race. Chatting with my Asian friends was the only time I really had an emotional connection with the outside world. I'm slowly realizing that the freedom the white establishment brought me was illusory. Freedom still depended on my own slow and continuous personal struggle. This struggle remains connected to concepts such as Asianness and Chineseness. I need to ease my loneliness by gathering and looking to the horizon of the emergence of future community.
As a youth growing up in the most developed region of China during a time of globalization, I had limited knowledge about China and did not feel connected to it. When I entered a British university in China, I had a memorable experience in a communications class where a teacher from the Netherlands boldly claimed that Chinese students were unable to think about problems like Western people. Throughout the semester, he solely presented Western theories in class. Predictably, I did not succeed in the course. Most Chinese students dislike theories, as they perceive them to be disconnected from their daily lives. This is clearly related to the decontextualization of the theory. In The Creolization of Theory, Shu-mei Shih suggests that the fundamental reason for the decontextualization of theories is actually that in American academia, the acceptance process of theory has filtered out the externality and peculiarity of theory, turning it into a textbook-style critical theory and reproducing it within the academy.
Despite not experiencing complete colonization by Western powers, China has undergone a rapid process of globalization. As a result, China consistently finds itself in a situation similar to that of post-colonial societies. I have come to the realization that employing feminist theory or minority theory can assist the Chinese people in navigating the challenges posed by globalization. The book The Creolization of Theory has been instrumental in guiding my thinking about how minorities and marginalized groups within Western contexts can engage in theoretical discussions with the larger systems they encounter, while also developing theories rooted in their own lived experiences.
Unlike Derrida's discussion of the Other when the Other is always toujours déjà, or à venir. It is these structural oppressions that we, as the Other, face. And this future should be a future that has already arrived. As a queer Asian artist, I am subjected to the double otherness of Chinese and Western art, and for an artist who may live in Europe for a long time in the future, how do I approach theory and practice?
So I wanted to look for a dynamic process, a process of continuous generation: for example, responding based on reality to generate theoretical thinking and reflection. I think the lowercase and plural (the others) in lowercase (theories) need to be contextualized through "gathering". This thesis is going to be a little attempt at "gathering". In a conversation between Mindy Seu and Legacy Russell, they mentioned that an essay anthology or digital index, in their presentations of new histories, might serve as maps. By aggregating nodes and markers, hard research, and scattered facts, these containers might surface suppressed voices among the connections they draw, as introduced by Saidiya Hartman’s notion of “critical fabulation.” Different from the traditional lexicon, I hope to recombine my living experience and these concepts, repeatedly incorporate personal subjectivity, and guide repeated, skipping, and rhizomatic reading with the help of hypertext. Lexicon with hypertext, as staying with trouble.
A for Anus
Anal Castration
In Chinese slang, the anus is humorously referred to as "chrysanthemum". I believe this is not just due to its similar appearance, but also because in traditional Chinese culture, the chrysanthemum is associated with "death" and "sacrifice ritual". Both are almost taboo topics in China and are not to be mentioned or touched. In my youth, I felt ashamed of my fantasy of wanting to be a "bottom", and feeling "guilty towards my parents", to the extent that I only started exploring my anus very late.
My encounter with Paul B. Preciado was because he wrote a series of articles during COVID-19, published in the Chinese edition of Artforum. My undergraduate tutor, Luciano Zubillaga, in a film, linked the anus with a poem by Rilke (http://rainer-maria-rilke.de/020095dieuhrensonah.html). Here, Luciano explored the anus as a zero point for the deterritorialization of the heterosexual body, its pleasure serving as a metaphor for (sexual) communism.
On a sex date, bottoms will be asked for face, nude, and anus various photos, tops in many cases just provide a photo of a larger-than-average penis or a muscle photo. I generally don't like to casually enter the classification of "top", "versatile" and "bottom", but my phone album always has more photos of my own penis and muscles. Because subconsciously I find the "top self" more attractive than the "bottom self".
Upon arriving in the Netherlands, I faced the violence of being racialized and eroticized. The sentiment of "no Asians!" has been adopted as a slogan of a white supremacist gay "community" that coerces Asian men to occupy an unsexy, undesirable position, seen as soft, effeminate, and poorly endowed—in other words, to occupy bottomhood. On Chinese social media Red, many Chinese gays and women have shown their disgust at the lack of masculinity of Asian men. They show that they don't hate "yellow fever" because they also only like white men, calling themselves "white fever". Within the Asian community, I have long been marginalized for behaviors such as dyeing my hair and wearing makeup.
D for Depoliticize
The first time I encountered someone who identified as "queer" was a Dutch in PZI, and they frequently attend drag shows and similar events. In reality, I have very little interaction with such white “queer”. I struggle to comprehend how we both identify as queer, yet our lives or dating experiences are in two completely different worlds. They can easily hook up with white "daddies", and "muscular" men. They are always active on Grindr and well-liked. I am aware that they are not interested in people from other races like myself. They can openly display their true selves in front of their families as much as they desire, and they can consistently receive recognition or funding as "successful queer filmmakers".
Race is not a big part of the gay movement. Or they don't want to discuss it, they only care about sucking more dicks. Non-white gays being sexualized and fetishized is hardly ever brought up. Mepschen, Duyvendak, and Tonkens have brought up the Dutch gays' entanglement with neo-nationalist and normative citizenship discourses. Dutch gay identity does not threaten heteronormativity, but in fact, helps shape and reinforce the contours of ‘tolerant’ and ‘liberal’ Dutch national culture. That is, Dutch gay identity is depoliticized, and never be queer.
On the other hand, dating apps such as Grindr, sex parties, and Truvada PrEP are popular products among queer subjects. But these products also demonstrate that queerness and the term queer are not political. It was initially expressed by the activist group ACT UP to confront the political, social, and cultural marginalization of sexual minorities. However, it has become a neoliberal co-option of the term queer and queer masculinities. By positioning neoliberalism and queerness as historical counterparts, while the former propagated as an ideological dominance, it co-opted, commodified, depoliticized, and fragmented the latter.
P for Penumbrae
Penumbrae Query Shadow
In the ancient Chinese text The Adjustment of Controversies, the three existences of 罔兩(penumbra), 景(shadow), and 形(body) appear. This is regarded by contemporary East Asian queer scholars as a method of liberation from binary thinking.
I am a gay who does not attend parties or pride events. The only occasion I entered was in a sauna in Lisbon, where I was unable to feel any sexual arousal in the darkened maze. A man attempted to engage in sexual activity with me, accidentally spilling poppers on my leg. I felt embarrassed and promptly left. I am unable to fully come out to my parents, who have been aware for a long time but are still in denial. I do not fit the Western ideal of an Asian gay man. I had a suspicion that being so incapable of gay writing. I would have to get into those gay scenes.
But I have retained my darkness and melancholy. If those progressive, homonormative homosexuals are shadows, then I am a faint shadow on the edge of the shadows (penumbrae). Unlike Dutch gay men whose identities have been depoliticized, my struggle has a long way to go. I am an assemblage of experiences that have drifted and torn apart, which is why I need to be "gathering" here temporarily. I must ask the shadow why it continues to follow patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, and homonationalism.
Q for Queerness
It wasn't until my freshman year at a British university that I truly came to terms with my homosexuality, despite my same-sex experiences beginning in high school. I engaged in sexual activities with some male classmates whose sexual orientation was unknown at high school. We didn't use terms like "gay" or "queer" to characterize this behavior. Relationships, let alone sex, were not allowed in Chinese high schoosl. Same-sex seems to be available as a way to explore the sexual self usually in the name of game, and male friendship.
Until I came to the Netherlands I had never defined myself as a "queer". I have lived most of my life near Chengdu (the gay capital in China) and Shanghai. In Hija de Perra's 2014 article Filthy Interpretations asks:“What is the future of this （queer) theory that runs the risk of being swallowed up and bought at a cheap price by the capitalist system?” In the last few years, the emergence of gay-friendly establishments and the introduction of multiculturalism in gentrifying areas have been showcased by the government as indicators of the country's progressiveness and a demonstration of its 'global' status. However, the Chinese government continues to make considerable efforts to suppress the LGBT community.
Meanwhile, I heard about Wai-Siam Hee's From Amorous Histories to Sexual Histories book from a Sinophone academic*.* Wai-Siam Hee examined the shift of Chinese males same sex from a traditional preference for sex art to marginalization by the state's pathological narrative of "sexual history" under the guise of "sexual science," and the influence of mainstream Western values propagating "homophobia" in China.
By using “queer” to define my work, I am neither suggesting that Chinese non-normative expressions of desire and gender are direct and outdated translations of those found and theorized in the Western world nor am I affirming the nativist response to the homogeneity and cultural imperialism represented by the globalization of queerness. Rather, I want to examine how interpretations of queer identities and theories, influenced by the unequal impacts of globalization, move between various settings with shared histories of non-conventional desires, gender presentations, and behaviors, and evolve and reconfigure in the procedure.
S for STDs
STDs have always been treated special, my upbringing and environment never mentioned it to me. My sexual behavior until the age of 20 was associated with a fear of viruses, especially HIV.Leo Bersani's psychoanalytic description of the risks of sexual behavior in his article points directly to the issue of death as a risk of contracting a virus for which there was no widely available treatment or means of long-term survival at the time. In early epidemiological investigations in the United States, the distinctive viral characteristics of HIV and its association with gay men confirmed, in retrospect, the role of men in "biopropagation" in the broadest sense of the word, usually as opposed to viral transmission or bacterial maintenance.
I started reading Paul B. Preciado and Mel Y. Chen's articles on the virus starting with COVID-19, so I'm not afraid of it now. From June until now, I have been experiencing recurring STDs. The recurring infections are related to my marginalization, racialization, unstable life circumstances, and a weakened immune system. It was at the time of Venus retrograde that I participated in an erotic writing workshop. I found that the constant slight itching and pain in my anus and rectum did not connect me to "death" or "the grave," but rather gave me a persistent erotic sensation. This eroticism comes from the fact that behind the pain there is a kind of anal and rectal microbial and viral drama and rampant vitality. If Bersan's grave is the grave of “man” , what is “man“ in the midst of it all? If we consider Sylvia Wynter's Sylvia Wynter’s critique of the abiding biocentrism of orders of knowledge, which buttresses the colonially delineated “human” (Man), as well as the retention of a godly positioning while wearing the Enlightenment badge of secular science.This kind of “man” represents whiteness, masculinity, cis-ness, and ability. How do we think about refusing to confront this paradigm of our calling ourselves "human" in the face of viruses? How do we think about this pattern of calling ourselves "human" when we refuse to face the virus?
I chose the octopus rather than myself to appear in this drag show perhaps because I didn't just want to explore being Asian/Chinese, but more so being inhuman."Has the Queer Ever Been Human?" asked by Dana Luciano and Mel Y. Chen in GLQ Volume 21. Octopuses and viruses maintain their mysteries, opacities, and fundamental alterity, like the unstable category of queerness that refuses to be known.