‘Paris’ and ‘scar’: queer social reproduction, homonormative division of labour and HIV/AIDS economy in postsocialist China

Abstract

This essay explores the imbrications between queer precarity and social reproduction from the perspective of homonormative division of labour. Contextualizing the emergence of China’s HIV/AIDS economy and its reliance on queer intimate labour, it argues that the homonormative division of labour are part and parcel to maintain and nurture the economic, political structures of LGBT liberalism. Instead of providing ‘local case’ of homonormativity, this paper connects the normalizing power on sexuality and bodies to the larger geography of transnational labour division and conditions of labour precarity, providing an analysis of South-focused political economy of homonormativity. Arguing against viewing precarity as an overarching global phenomenon, this essay centres on lived experiences of the queer ‘precariat’ and highlights the contradiction and interplay of agency and conformity. Reclaiming the Chinese queer lexicon tongzhi (comrades), not only as a sexual identity, but as queer sociality where desires and work converge, this essay cautions against narrowly defined but broadly circulated concepts such as ‘oppression’, ‘resistance’, ‘social movement’ and ‘community’ that are predominantly derived from Western centric political imagination and activist space.

Keywords:

• HIV/AIDS
• homonormative division of labour
• LGBT/tongzhi
• postsocialist China
• precarity
• queer social reproduction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

University of Minnesota-Mellon.

Notes on contributors

Shana Ye

Dr. Shana Ye is an assistant professor in Women and Gender Studies at University of Toronto Scarborough and in the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. Her research lies at the intersection of transnational feminism, queer studies, post/socialist studies and theories of affect and trauma. Shana's work up to date has examined the ways in which discourses of queer sexualities in post/socialism compete, align and are produced through history of colonialism, Cold War ideology, globalized modalities of neoliberalism, and new forms of empire making. From the perspectives of trauma and affective life, her book-in-progress, Red Father, Pink Son: Queer Socialism and Post/socialist Coloniality explores how radical sexual practice and politics in socialism are rendered invisible in Western-centric transnational queer studies. Centering on the “impossible” queer socialist subject—in China's Cultural Revolution, HIV/AIDS movements, institutionalization of queer Chinese studies, transnational grassroots queer/feminist activism, as well as Chinese neocolonialism, Shana's project brings to the forefront questions of representation, queer mode of knowing, and the sexualized, gendered, and racialized power relations in transnational queer praxis.