Part of the CSD Spring 2021 Seminar Series
Dr Shana Ye (University of Toronto) will present the paper 'Queer Chimerica: Global China and the Political Economy of Ku'er'.
What's the relationship between queer fluidity and capital’s demands for labour fluidity and flexibility? Queer theorisation is often thought of as being originated from French poststructuralist critique of gender and sexual identities and the US-based LGBT social movement.
This talk traces a third genealogy of "queer" by examining the ways in which the production of queerness and the development of LGBT industry are inseparable of Cold War racial capitalism and labour precarity, exemplified by the post-Cold War interdependence of China and United States.
Treating "queer" as a set of material relations of capital and labour mediated by geopolitics and affect, this talk argues that the maintenance of a Cold War divide is crucial to sustain the transnational “queer business” and to conceal inequality enabled by the alliance of democratic and authoritarian neoliberalism.
The seminar will take place online. Register for this event on Eventbrite.
The Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD) is based in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Westminster. The centre undertakes research across a range of critical social and political challenges, promoting an interdisciplinary environment that embraces colleagues from politics, international relations, sociology and criminology.
