Year: 2015
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This dissertation concerns itself with the eruption of a large number of gay narratives on the Chinese internet in its first decade. There are two central arguments. First, the composing and sharing of narratives online played the role of a social movement that led to the formation of gay identity and collectivity in a society where open challenges to the authorities were minimal. Four factors, 1) the primacy of the internet, 2) the vernacular as an avenue of creativity and interpretation, 3) the transitional experience of the generation of the internet, and 4) the evolution of gay narratives, catalyzed by the internet, enhanced, amplified, and interacted with each other in a highly complicated and accelerated dynamic, engendered a virtual gay social movement. Second, many online gay narratives fall into what I term "prodigal romance," which depicts gay love as parent-obligated sons in love with each other, weaving in violent conflicts between desire and duty in its indigenous context. The prodigal part of this model invokes the archetype of the Chinese prodigal, who can only return home having excelled and with the triumph of his journey. The romantic part imbues love between men with the power of shaping and transforming the self and the weight of anchoring an identity. The result is often the parting of the two lovers, with one returning home a good son to his duty and another continuing as a gay orphan, wandering in pursuit of his desire. The latter is a new desiring subject who chooses to integrate his desire as a core of his identity; and he is the figure bearing the purpose of the movement.
Source: TSpace (University of Toronto)
Author: Gang Pan
Language: English
Topic: Gender and Feminist Studies
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3149781073