Speaker: Phil Freestone, PhD Candidate, University of Reading

Registration: https://bit.ly/2BzCId2

Abstract:

This linguistic-ethnographic study of the practices of same-sex-attracted men in Chengdu and Taipei explores the impact of histories, traditions, and global cultural flows on sexual identities and related social actions. The political and cultural trajectories of the two research sites have led to distinct combinations of global and local influences, and an intriguing variety of social and cultural performativities. For example, trends related to LGBT+-friendly legislation and same-sex marriage are distinct in each region, while clear similarities exist in terms of influence from traditional 'Chinese' and/or 'Asian' discourses of family and marriage, and in terms of the prominence of global discourses of media, fashion and popular culture. Study participants tend to navigate such discursive networks with agency and creativity, and the study therefore takes a relativistic and dialogic stance on the relationship between discourses of sexuality across the globe, and rejects of a ‘West to rest’ theory of the development of non-mainstream sexual identities in Asia. Instead, the relationship between discourses and everyday language use is seen as key in the development of hybridized local identities, since the various social languages offered by discourses are used as tools in the continually emergent performance of simultaneously global and local identities. Indeed, it is argued that what same-sex-attracted men say and do in Taipei and Chengdu does not simply index their identity amongst a number of pre-formulated notions (e.g. 'Gay’, 'Asian', 'Chinese', 'Westernised'), but that discourses allow them to construct their identities spontaneously , with nuance, and with a degree of creativity and control using numerous modes of communication, including digital media. The resulting performance of highly individualised identities shows varying degrees of influence from divergent discourses, some with fuzzy geographical origins, and reflects the complexity of contemporary processes of global re-centering, discursive reworking, and identity articulation.

Speaker's Biography:

Since 2008, Phil has been teaching English for Academic Purposes at universities such as the University of Leeds, King’s College London, University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is currently working towards a PhD under the supervision of Rodney Jones at Reading University, which is a study in Mediated Discourse Analysis with a focus on issues of sexual identity in Chinese cultural contexts. The study analyses case studies of same-gender-attracted men in Taipei and Chengdu and focuses on how they position themselves with pertinent systems of knowledge and ‘Chinese culture’.