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Petrus Liu's new book, Queer Marxism in Two Chinas, opens with the observation that when it comes to contemporary China one does not often hear queer and Marxism
uttered in the same sentence. In fact giving contemporary China some
further thought, especially with respect to its presence on the economic
world stage, one might argue that its association with Marxism itself
is increasingly an obfuscated one. In the field of queer studies however
there has been a significant increase in publications that focus on
China. Liu's study is not only a welcome addition to this burgeoning
field because of its provocative engagement with queer and Marxist
theory but also for its focus on the People's Republic of China (or
simply China) as well as the Republic of China (or Taiwan). In its
opening pages it draws attention to the 'homonormative turn' as the
assumed best strategy for inclusion and equal rights (p. 1) and the idea
of 'morally upstanding citizens who are no different from anyone else'
(p. 2). As Liu points out, while there is in essence nothing wrong with
the 'desire for mainstream inclusion' it cannot be denied that this has
'alienated, disempowered, and further stigmatized' those who cannot be
so easily included in this project (p. 2). What percolates through such
initial considerations is a strong sense of inequality that seems to
build upon and draw from neoliberalism. Petrus Liu asks here: 'Is
neoliberalism truly the dominant cultural logic of contemporary queer
Chinese cultures?' His subsequent questions all reveal in themselves
what the rest of the book sets out to accomplish through the reading and
analysis of postwar queer Chinese works 'that retool and revitalize
Marxist social analysis' (p. 4). Treating this as a queer Marxist
archive Liu seeks to make two intertwined arguments. The first here is
that the 1949 division of China has strongly shaped the way Chinese
queer thought has developed since. The second argument holds that many
postwar queer Chinese writers, the majority which seemed to have been
based in the Republic of China (ROC, or Taiwan) instead of in Mainland
China, 'developed a unique theory and literature by fusing Marxism with
inquiries into gender and sexuality' (p. 4). In this analysis it is
striking how Liu unpacks the way in which these writers came to
understand the historical creation of both PRC and ROC as foundational
for queer Chinese life itself (p. 5).
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Liu's study is typically one that requires a detailed introduction like the one provided above, even if
it unavoidably reduces some of the more nuanced and precise arguments
the author seeks to make. There is a lot packed in these and subsequent
pages that I found merits and often requires rereading. A recurring
topic here is the engagement with the way 'western' and 'eastern' queer
thinking has developed in relation to but also separate of each other.
As Liu also suggests here, 'the intellectual tradition of queer Marxism
offers a neoliberal alternative to the Euro-American model of queer
emancipation grounded in liberal values of privacy, tolerance,
individual rights and tolerance' (p. 5). As is also my experience with
queer Indian thinking, LGBTQ[1]
communities do not necessarily traverse the same unavoidable path which
is rooted in globalising neoliberalism. For Liu, excavating the Marxist
intellectual roots of contemporary queer thought in China and Taiwan
helps with answering a particularly urgent question: 'How does being
queer matter?' (p. 13). This question is particularly pertinent if we
consider the way popular culture as well as social science has cast
Chinese homosexuals as neoliberal subjects fighting for mainstream
inclusion.
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From the start it is clear why it is so important to engage with the two Chinas
in tackling such questions. In relation to this Liu's focus is on how
queer cultural producers engage with the problematic of China as
multiple. Here the author notes: 'Treating China as an object of
theoretical reflection disrupts a strong tendency in the current field
of gender and sexuality studies to separate theory, in particular queer
theory, from empirical and historical perspectives on same-sex relations
in China' (p. 21). In relation to this Liu also engages with critiques
of eurocentrism in queer thinking but more importantly his study
questions 'the assumption that renders China as antithetical and
exterior to queer theory' (p. 21). Liu takes the position that queer
theory is an incomplete project and one that is constantly transformed
by China (p. 21). Queer theory, accordingly, requires a theory of
geopolitics. Furthermore, recognising Chinese queer theory as a
geopolitically mediated discourse helps to correct the perception of it
as a derivative discourse (p. 22). It is such arguments and
considerations that build up to a particularly striking section of the
book where Liu delves deeper into queer theory and its engagement with
the other and its deviations from its 'western' queer context. For Liu
the problem is not so much the inherent racism and Orientalism that
emerges from some queer studies that focus on the East, but 'that
postwar theories of sexuality often unwittingly reproduce the logic of
liberal pluralism and fail to develop stronger political responses to
the dilemma of the Cold War, which the case of a divided China helps us
understand' (p. 30). Strikingly, Liu argues here that queer theory does
not need the Chinas because it is ethically imperative to include the
Other, 'but because US theory is itself born in the shadows of the
failures of liberal pluralism' (p. 30). As such, queer Marxism with its
focus on the two Chinas provides 'the conceptual tools to illuminate the
historical connections between queer theory and liberal pluralism for
the global scholarly community' (p. 31).
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It is this latter argument which also opens up this book to a wider
readership to which I include myself. While subsequent chapters will
undoubtedly deepen the understanding of the development of Chinese queer
thinking over the past decades for those working on such questions
themselves, for those less familiar with the two Chinas' Liu's book is
particularly insightful for the way it actually engages with the
layeredness of queer thinking/theorisation. Here the engagement with
Marxism is revealing for the inherent inequality in terms of access to
resources, rights and in a sense 'normalised' or 'accepted' homosexual
lifestyles. As Liu points out, 'Chinese queer theory enters an alliance
with Marxist critique to challenge the distribution of resources
(symbolic and material), as well as the monopoly of sexologists and
education expert in the production of knowledge for and about sexual
minorities' (p. 38). As he elucidates
on further on
in the second chapter, '[for] queer Marxists, the queer is not a
synonym for homosexuality, but a material reminder of one's relation to
an unequal structure of power' (p. 40). And with this comes, in a sense,
the obligation to recognise distance 'between the diversity of erotic
desires, genders, identities, and intimacies in human cultures and the
liberal pluralist reduction into fixed categories under global
capitalism' (p. 40).
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At the heart of Liu's analysis lies an engagement with queer films and
books that even if one has no familiarity with these artists' works, Liu
skilfully introduces and brings alive. In chapter two the focus is
among others on Cui Zi'en, who is considered
as to be
China's most iconic and controversial queer filmmaker, essayist and
novelist (p. 48). About his films Liu argues that they are 'complex
mediations on the historical moment of their production, and [that] they
cannot be treated as subtitled images at international film festivals
with no regard for the Chinese political and intellectual contexts
within which these narratives function as an intervention' (p. 49). As
such, his films must be analysed together with his essays and novels.
The chapter furthermore pays attention to the case and 2003 prosecution
of queer Marxist critic Josephine Ho and what has come to be known as
the zoophilia incident in Taiwan. Here the attention is
particularly on feminism in Taiwan but it is not hard to see the
linkages with gay normalisation as well (p. 61). While it does not lie
in the scope of this review to reproduce the intricate details of the
case of Josephine Ho or the further development of feminism in Taiwan,
what this case study in particular underlines is the often difficult
relationship between popular public/State-led narratives and the way
'others' who fall outside normalisation efforts and desires get
side-lined, prosecuted or simply left out of the equation. As Liu
argues,
Men and women are legally and formally equal in Taiwan, but there is no
equality for those who seek freedom from normative categories of gender,
such as transgendered and transgendering persons, intersexed
individuals, effeminate gay men, butch and femme (T/po) lesbians, single
women, women who choose not to bear children, sex workers who do not
believe that sex should only occur under the sanctity of monogamous
marriage, and numerous other communities who lie and work at a critical
distance from the idealized notion of womanhood, which state feminists
take to be the basis of the gender equality movement (p. 63).
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Ho's work (in particular The Gallant Woman) is particularly
important here because her theory of sexual revolution shows that gender
is a process, not some inalterable fact or given, and as such a series
of cultural contestations. Furthermore, 'if women's oppression
originates from the effects of acculturation rather than biological
necessity, then culture can be unlearned and revolutionized' (p. 67).
Her terming of sex revolution views sexuality as the site to unlearn and
relearn culture itself. 'Ho suggests that women can become liberated by
aligning themselves with the disruptive force of queers' (p. 67). Here
Liu argues that we need to understand Ho's queer Marxism as one
participating in the tradition of cultural materialism. This offers
'theoretical reflections on the relations between a society's economic
base and ideological superstructure without necessarily arguing that
culture is determined in the last instance by the economic base' (p.
71).
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Such engagement with Chinese queer thinkers is continued in chapter
three which focuses on the rise of the queer Chinese novel. Liu shows
that 'a distinctive aesthetic apparatus for representing fully
ontologized homosexual male characters appeared in Chinese literature
first in the 1980s' (p. 86). This 'apparatus' was first developed by
Taiwan-based Chinese authors and
that this has
its origins in their queer engagement with Chinese Marxism. Here Liu
deviates from Foucauldian histories of sexuality in studies of China:
while he does acknowledge that there were important epistemic
developments in twentieth-century Chinese literature which impacted on
queer identities, Liu argues that 'these changes did not take place
primarily as a result of Western knowledge.' Instead Liu emphasises the
agency of the artists in question and that it is important to situate
their work within the historical context of their responses to Marxism
'as both a communist bureaucracy and an indispensable intellectual
resource' (p. 87). To substantiate this argument Liu works with a number
of queer novels from the early days such as Pai Hsien-yung's Crystal Boys and Chen Ruoxi's Paper Marriage, both of
which were written in the 1980s. While it would go too far here to
repeat Liu's extensive analysis, it is worth reproducing the comments he
makes at the end of the third chapter: 'The story of the rise of queer
Chinese literature is an exemplary dialogue between Marxism and sexual
modernities' (p. 112). While here this dialogue is particularly
underlined by Chen's novel, it also speaks more broadly to the way this
dialogue offers an infinite number of possibilities in terms of the
implied reconfiguration (p. 133).
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The final chapter discusses queer human rights in and against the two Chinas. Like women's human rights there is an inherent paradox here with which Liu opens this chapter
with.
'Queer human rights advocates ask us to imagine individuals as bearers
of certain inalienable rights by virtue of a particularity (their
queerness) and of a universality (their humanness) at the same time' (p.
138). For Liu inspiring examples are offered by queer activists in both
China and Taiwan in terms of 'how we can leverage the contradiction
between the human and the queer to advance socially progressive agendas'
(p. 138). But he also points out that there will always be a gap
'between the universal rhetoric of queer human rights and its concrete
practice, sine since any local discourse of the
human is inevitably fraught with national interests that exceed the
domain of sexuality' (pp. 139–40). One of the key points Liu makes here
is that queer human rights demand a 'renewed understanding of the human,
one that casts this figure as neither the agent of social
transformation nor the subject of universal rights' (p. 142). Drawing
upon Marxist thinking, Liu argues that instead the human should be
understood as 'an ethical perspective on the equality of human time' (p.
142). It is particularly in these final pages that Liu shows his
fluency in Marxist thought but, while the analysis may be too
theoretical for some, what stands out is his concern for the casting of
queer human rights as a simple reflection of pre-existing diversity
which draws upon liberal pluralism. Complex geopolitical relations and
interests are always at play here, so Liu argues. His analysis therefore
shows that the assumptions of free and unfree queer subjects in China
and Taiwan 'are entangled with the unequal distribution of power and
resources across the straits, for which reason a Marxist perspective on
the construction of the human is both necessary and timely' (p. 154).
And it is here that Liu returns to his earlier engagement with the
alleged incommensurability of East and West which is a recurring topic
of discussion in studies of 'queer Asia.' While this has pushed the idea
of cultural-constructedness of various queer notions to the foreground,
it has also resulted in a contradiction between a queer critique of
heteronormativity and the postcolonial critique of allochronism, the
idea that the distinction between gay and straight identities was
basically invented in the West (p. 156). As Liu abundantly makes clear
in his study, the relationship as well as deviations in queer
trajectories between China and Taiwan provides incredibly rich material
to rethink such assumptions. As the author points out: 'The category of
queer, in either China, does not describe the empirical existence of a
social group. It is rather a sign of national difference, flashed for a
global audience, between ROC's liberalism and PRC's lack of human
rights' (p. 157). Considering Taiwan's global perception as a 'liberal
counterpart to authoritarian China' what is lacking here is 'an account
of the social conditions under which a sexual subject qualifies as a
human being and becomes a recipient of political rights and
entitlements' (p. 162). In the end Liu returns to the oppositional
positioning of Marxism and liberalism whereby queerness is attributed to
the accomplishments of the latter. Yet, what his analysis has made
abundantly clear by now is that 'Marx's labor theory of value contains
an ethical perspective of the relationality of the self that is more
compatible with queer (rather than gay and lesbian) theory and
movements, in contrast to liberalism's emphasis on individual autonomy,
identity, and identity-based rights' (p. 167).
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Queer Marxism in Two Chinas is an immensely rich study both in
empirical and theoretical terms and makes a genuinely important
contribution to the field of queer studies in general. As an academic
not directly involved in research in either China or Taiwan I found this
book particularly rewarding for its insightful discussion of the
intersections between Marxist and queer thinking. The strength of Liu's
study lies in the way it shows how various intersecting unequal (power)
relations, struggles and conditions do not just shape queer lives and
lifestyles but also frame and guide (academic) discourses of policy,
rights and ultimately 'difference.' While the material Liu builds on is
clearly Chinas-centric it is not hard to see how this study will prove
useful for scholars working on various queer issues elsewhere as well.
With reference to my own review essay 'Queer Asia: Advances in a field in motion,'
it is of paramount importance that studies such as Petrus Liu's are
read, explored and discussed within the context of the burgeoning field
of publications on queer Asia. While such 'reading' will challenge our
conceptualisation of the field itself, it will also contribute to
rethinking the specific sociocultural assumptions that studies continue
to make.
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A review would not be complete without a small point of critique and
perhaps some readers will already have picked up on this while reading
through my lengthy and occasionally convoluted 'summary' of this book.
Like many other publications that have come out in the field of queer
Asian studies in recent years, Liu's well-crafted study is also a
thoroughly complex one. While in this case the author's point was
obviously to make an important theoretical argument which clearly draws
upon critical, reflexive and ultimately complex previous thinking, it
does make an important study such as this one 'less' readable for a
wider audience. For those involved in queer activism or are
'simply' queer themselves and living in one of the two Chinas, this book
might not be particularly accessible. I fully realise that it is a turn
academic publishing has taken a long time ago, away from mainstream
readership (and as such also those the study speaks 'about' or 'for'),
but it is something to keep reminding ourselves of while we continue to be involved
in questions that relate to issues of inequality and marginalisation.
That said I would like to applaud Petrus Liu for this exceptional study
which I have no doubt will have an impact on future studies of queer
Asia in the years to come.
Notes
[1] I do not necessarily subscribe to
one version of this abbreviation but understand the 'Q' not so much as a
fifth category but as one that is critical of categorisation in general
while at the same time pointing at the exclusion of those who do not
fit under the rubric of LGBT.
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