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Jungle Strippers at the American Club: Performing Queer Relatedness in Cosmopolitan Beijing

William Schroeder

In: Relationalities: A Response to Difference; 18 May 2010-18 May 2010; Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures (RICC), University of Manchester, UK. 2010.

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Abstract

This paper takes an ethnographic look at relationality by exploring a scene that occurred at the launch party of a cosmopolitan gay business-networking group in Beijing. At this party, nationality, sexuality, class, and ethnicity all played roles. But I suggest, after an analysis of some of the guests’ momentary reactions and feelings, that the explicit linkages we usually make between structural categories and subject positions do not fully explain how people understand the statuses we attribute to them. Status-related contests of power occur in a contextual jostle and often have but a superficial relationship to preconceived identity categories. At the launch party, “gay,” “Chinese,” “Cameroonian,” “American,” and other identity categories functioned as positionalities rather than statuses and as such allowed for the unexpected reordering of classic hierarchies. In the end, however, decisions about who is related to whom and how rely not only on the discursiveness of categories but also on the affect of participants. With this understanding, domination and subordination lose their polarity, which is a good thing, and relatedness takes on an infinitely more subjective character.

Bibliographic metadata

Type of resource:
Content type:
Type of conference contribution:
Publication date:
Author(s) list:
Conference title:
Relationalities: A Response to Difference
Conference venue:
Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures (RICC), University of Manchester, UK
Conference start date:
2010-05-18
Conference end date:
2010-05-18
Abstract:
This paper takes an ethnographic look at relationality by exploring a scene that occurred at the launch party of a cosmopolitan gay business-networking group in Beijing. At this party, nationality, sexuality, class, and ethnicity all played roles. But I suggest, after an analysis of some of the guests’ momentary reactions and feelings, that the explicit linkages we usually make between structural categories and subject positions do not fully explain how people understand the statuses we attribute to them. Status-related contests of power occur in a contextual jostle and often have but a superficial relationship to preconceived identity categories. At the launch party, “gay,” “Chinese,” “Cameroonian,” “American,” and other identity categories functioned as positionalities rather than statuses and as such allowed for the unexpected reordering of classic hierarchies. In the end, however, decisions about who is related to whom and how rely not only on the discursiveness of categories but also on the affect of participants. With this understanding, domination and subordination lose their polarity, which is a good thing, and relatedness takes on an infinitely more subjective character.

Institutional metadata

University researcher(s):

Record metadata

Manchester eScholar ID:
uk-ac-man-scw:111847
Created by:
Schroeder Iii, William
Created:
25th January, 2011, 21:49:19
Last modified by:
Schroeder Iii, William
Last modified:
3rd February, 2016, 03:57:00

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