Financed by: The Danish Council for Independent Research, Humanities
Granted to: Zoran Pecic
Grant: 1,973,988 kr.

Homosexuality in China has been discussed and studied for decades. In the present-day mainstream public discourse, for instance, the emergence of non-normative desires in contemporary China is viewed as ‘liberating’ and ‘inevitable’. On the other hand, postcolonial scholars who are critical of the ‘global gay’ narrative, argue that there exist culturally specific sexualities that are different from those of the West. In both cases, what is ignored are the hybrid spaces found in the interplay between the Western postmodern influence and China’s present postsocialist modernity. Chinese filmmakers have been exploring these spaces in films such as East Palace, West Palace (1996) and Lan Yu (2001) , in which non-normative sexuality is framed not as Chinese/Western, global/local, but as hybrid, political and paradoxical. Yet, these spaces have largely gone unnoticed in Queer and Postcolonial Studies, which are pertinent starting points for such an inquiry. Addressing and theorising upon these queer paradoxical spaces is the main contribution of this project.

Project Status:
2013

February: project initiation

May: Presentation of paper entitled ‘Queer Spaces in Lan Yu and East Palace, West Palace’ at the ‘After the Empires’ conference held at Roskilde University.

October: Participation in the conference ‘Chinese Cinemas in and Outside of China’, organised by the Chinese Film Forum UK (held in Manchester, UK).