Unruly Comparison: Queerness, Hong Kong, and the Sinophone

Abstract

<p>In <em>Unruly Comparison</em>, Alvin K. Wong offers a new model of doing transnational and comparative works in queer theory, area studies, and Sinophone studies. Excavating queer Sinophone literature, cinema, and visual culture since the postcolonial handover, it demonstrates how a globally “insignificant” region like Hong Kong exemplifies unruliness that exceeds the totalizing forces of British colonialism, Chinese governmentality, and global capitalism. Moving beyond the confines of Eurocentrism in queer theory and China-centrism in area studies, Wong advances a theory of unruly comparison that understands Hong Kong as a site of racial, gender, sexual, and cultural incommensurability. Theorizing comparison as asymmetrical relation and incommensurability rather than analogical equivalence, <em>Unruly Comparison</em> assembles non-equivalent queer figures from different times and spaces of Hong Kong Sinophone modernity. In sum, this book theorizes the perverse modernities of Hong Kong through unruly queer methodologies.</p>