Discourses of homosexuality and nationhood in Chinese online spaces

Abstract

This thesis analyzes contemporary discourses on homosexuality and Chinese nationhood in Chinese online spaces. Questions about the representations of homosexuality and gay rights issues and the construction of the relationship between homosexuality and Chinese nationhood are answered using critical discourse analysis. With an attention to the impact of the global/Western gay discourse, the study reveals the relatively under-explored discourses of homophobia, nationalism, homonationalism, homocolonialism, and counter-homophobia in Chinese online spaces.

A literature review of the socio-political and historical background of homosexuality and gay rights in China introduces the thesis, followed by an explanation of the postcolonial transnational perspective used in the research. Material from Chinese online spaces are analyzed using critical discourse analytical tools. Four case-based discourse studies are presented. The first case study reveals the homophobic representation of gay rights, such as marriage equality, as “Western values” that are not Chinese and pose a threat to the nation, demonstrating the discursive interplay between nationalist and homophobic discourses. The second and third case studies reveal the discursive construction of discourses of homonationalism and homocolonialism in Chinese online spaces. In these discourses, gay rights are positioned as only accessible in the West, and China is evaluated as essentially homophobic, (re)producing a (homo)colonialist representation of a “backward”, “uncivilized”, and “inferior” China versus a “modern”, “civilized”, and “superior” West. Such discourses prompt some gay and lesbian Chinese people to construct and reanimate an irreconcilable relationship between Chinese nationhood and homosexuality.

The last case study investigates two counter-homophobic discourses, i.e., discourses of “tradition” and “modernity”, which respectively reconstruct China’s tradition and culture as tolerant of homosexuality and position China’s modernity as entailing gay rights development. The discourse of “tradition” potentially romanticizes China’s tradition as if it was devoid of homophobia, and the discourse of “modernity” sometimes implicitly reproduces a homonationalist binary of “modernism” versus “traditionalism” by picturing China’s gay rights development as playing catch-up with the already modernized West. Yet, these counter-homophobic discourses may also be considered discourses of queering the nation since contrary to the homonationalist and homocolonialist representation of China as essentially homophobic, they actively imagine and project a China that is inclusive of homosexuality and gay rights. From a postcolonial transnational perspective, the projection and possible realization of gay rights in China may contest Western sexual exceptionalism by confronting and confounding the proclaimed superiority of the West as the only “beacon” of gay rights.

The thesis thus reveals situated knowledges about discourses of homosexuality and Chinese nationhood in online spaces. Against the background of the global/Western gay rights discourse, the research demonstrates that both nationalist homophobes and homocolonialist-inflected gay and lesbian Chinese people tend to construct gay rights as “Western rights” only, rendering homosexuality and Chinese nationhood irreconcilable with each other. By contrast, the discourses of queering the nation, such as the counter-homophobic discourses of “tradition” and “modernity”, despite their potential maladies, redress the tendency of essentializing China as already and forever homophobic, which may open up more possibilities to transform Chinese nationhood.