School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications

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From citizenship to queer counterpublic: reading Taipei's New Park

Martin, Fran ( 2000)

This paper focuses on the ways in which official narratives of the 'global city' in 1990s Taipei project models of sexuality which are negotiated and contested by gay and lesbian (tongzhi) activist practices and discourses. Analysing the densely symbolic site of Taipei's New Park and particularly the Democratic Progressive Party City Government's plans for its redevelopment (1995-96), the paper considers the tense relation which the liberal male homosexual cruising which traditionally takes place in New Park and the surrounding city block. Examining the City Government's liberal rhetoric on homosexuality (tongxinglian), the paper contrasts this rhetoric with the more conservative and overtly homophobic sexual policies espoused by other regimes in the region. It also attempts to unpack the logic that enables such a self-consciously 'tongzhi-friendly' administration nevertheless to continue harshly to discipline men who practise homosex in the newly 'public' spaces of the park and the street. Finally, the paper discusses some critical responses by tongshi writers and activists to the City Government's rewriting of the 'public' and the 'private' for the new Taipei.