Master of Arts Thesis Euroculture

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Master of Arts Thesis

Euroculture

University of Göttingen (Home)

University of Groningen (Host)

September 2016

How Difference Makes a Difference—Late Liberalism Within the

Sites of Chinese Queer University Students in “Europe”

Submitted by:

Yining Chen Student number home university:21414047 Student number host university:S2859815 Contact details (telephone/email):+31644332409 ineicyn@gmail.com Home university:Sabine Grenz Host university:Margriet van der Waal

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MA Programme Euroculture

Declaration

I, (Yining Chen) hereby declare that this thesis, entitled “How Difference Makes a Difference—Late Liberalism Within the Sites of Chinese Queer University Stu-dents in ‘Europe’”, submitted as partial requirement for the MA Programme Eu-roculture, is my own original work and expressed in my own words. Any use made within this text of works of other authors in any form (e.g. ideas, figures, texts, tables, etc.) are properly acknowledged in the text as well as in the bibliog-raphy.

I declare that the written (printed and bound) and the electronic copy of the sub-mitted MA thesis are identical.

I hereby also acknowledge that I was informed about the regulations pertaining to the assessment of the MA thesis Euroculture and about the general completion rules for the Master of Arts Programme Euroculture.

Signed ...………...

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Introduction ...1

Chapter One What Brought Me Here ...9

1.1 What brought me here ...9

1.2 Neoliberalism, late liberalism ...10

1.3 Immanent critique and its problems: a summary and interpretation of Povinelli’s criticism ...15

1.4 Subject formation, interdependency/connectivity/relationality and free-dom ...19

1.5 Conclusion ...22

Chapter Two How I Began and Proceeded My Study ...25

2.1 Unstructured interviewing and five participants ...25

2.2 Analysis: from dislocation to forms of belonging—why I moved away from an identity-centered, intersectional and transcultural approach ...27

2.3 Scientific credibility and relational ethics ...29

Chapter Three “Europe” ...35

3.1 Lu, Yang, Jie and “Europe” ...35

3.2 Lu and Yang ...35

3.2.1 “Sunny” and “more tolerant/accepting” ...35

3.2.2 Yang: race in seeking for partners ...40

3.3 Jie ...41

3.4 Lu, Yang, and Jie—multiple projections of “Europe" and multiple rela-tions to it—in the light of Homi Bhabha's theory of mimicry ...46

Chapter Four “China”: “LGBT Graduates”—Different Stages of Individual and Social Development ...53

4.1 “LGBT graduates” ...53

4.2 LGBT community and identity: self-acceptance and self-identification— different stages of individual development ...55

4.3 Tolerance towards queer people in “China”—different stage of social de-velopment ...59

4.4 Experiencer: “LGBT graduates” of Su, Xi, Lu, and Yang in relation to the “evolving/developing (Chinese) society” ...63

Chapter Five A Part That Plays No Part and How Difference Makes a Differ-ence—Lu’s Comment on an Attack of Gay Refugees ...67

5.1 Introduction ...67

5.2 The part that plays no part: Lu’s comment and the stage-of-development discourse ...68

5.3 How difference makes a difference—“slippage” and distribution of re-sponsibility ...71

Conclusion The Ones Who Cannot Walk Away from Omelas—Where and How to Proceed from Here ...76

Bibliography ...80

Primary Source ...87

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…and then, there are the illusions, that make life bearable the illusions that make life bearable, the illusions that make life bearable,

abiding in the continual flow.

John Giorno

Introduction

According to Elizabeth Povinelli, from the late 1960s through the 1970s, liberal gov-ernmentality, namely, liberal governments exercising control over the body of its popu-laces by its distribution of life and goods in a wide range of control techniques, were shaken by two legitimacy crises in Western Europe and the North Atlantic. One of the crises was that the legitimacy of paternalistic liberalism was shaken by radical anti-colonial and feminist social movement. The other crisis was that the legitimacy of the capitalist management of markets was shaken by Keynesian stagflation. From the per-spective of these two crises and their counter forces, the twined formations of politics of recognition and economics of neoliberalism should be seen as strategic containments of potentially more radical changes to liberal governmentality. 1

Since those formations, governance of social difference has been at an all time climax. We have witnessed the rise and failure of multiculturalism. For instance, in the wake of European crisis in 2009, Chancellor Angela Merkel declared to youth members of the German Christian Democratic Union in 2010 that multiculturalism had ‘“utterly failed” and immigrants need to do more to integrate. We have experienced the emer2

-gence of queer theory with its attachment to antinormativity and a future-oriented inde-terminacy, which coincides and interconnects with “the neoliberal consensus after the

Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberal

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-ism (Duke University Press, 2011). See also, “Interview with Elizabeth Povinelli by Mat Coleman and Kathryn Yusoff,” Society and Space, March 6, 2014, http://societyandspace.com/material/interviews/in-terview-with-elizabeth-povinelli-by-mat-coleman-and-kathryn-yusoff/, and Elizabeth A. Povinelli, “Defining security in late liberalism: a comment on Pedersen and Holbraad,” in Martin Holbraad and Morten Axel Pedersen, Times of Security: Ethnographies of Fear, Protest and the Future (Routledge, 2013).

Matthew Weaver and agencies, “Angela Merkel: German Multiculturalism Has ‘Utterly Failed,’” The 2

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Cold War.” This interconnection has led to a discursive proliferation of queer gender 3

and sexuality along with their commodification, or “fungiblization” as Shannon Win-nubst puts it, that reduced them from historically and geographically rooted and politi-cally salient phenomena, to fungible units for the neoliberal market and monetary sys-tem. 4

At the same time, especially in Western Europe, we have been, and remain in-volved in the conflicts between this, to borrow Éric Fassin’s word, “sexual democracy,” 5

and multiculturalism. Public anxiety about sexual diversity and cultural diversity has been expressed at “the tip of the clitoris.” For instance, in the beginning of 2016, at6

-tacks on gay refugees in Dutch asylum have provoked a debate on separated shelters for queer refugees. LGBT rights education in asylum centers has also been pushed to the forefront of the Dutch government’s agenda in order to promote societal security. 7

While governance of social difference is particularly acute in its politics of im-migration in Europe, sexual democracy enters the political agenda in “fortress Europe” in terms of being naturalized in the rhetoric of national identities. Alongside this, in8

-strumentalization of sexual politics is maneuvered in “a European ideology defined against immigration.” For instance, in the Dutch context, as Fassin explained in several 9

articles, the tradition of (sexual) tolerance, which is also the foundation of its politics 10

of multiculturalism, “has now been revised to justify intolerance against allegedly intol-erant Muslims as the best way to preserving Dutch national tolerance.” Similar strate11

Neville Hoad, “Back in the Mythology of the Missionary Position: Queer Theory as Neoliberal Symp

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-tom and Critique,” in The Global Trajectories of Queerness, ed. Sruti Bala and Ashley Tellis (Brill, 2015), 29–47, http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/books/b9789004217942s003.

Shannon Winnubst, Way Too Cool: Selling Out Race and Ethics (Columbia University Press, 2015). 4

Éric Fassin, “National Identities and Transnational Intimacies: Sexual Democracy and the Politics of 5

Immigration in Europe,” Public Culture Public Culture 22, no. 3 (2010): 507–529.

Elizabeth A. Povinelli, “The State of Shame: Australian Multiculturalism and the Crisis of Indigenous 6

Citizenship,” Critical Inquiry 24, no. 2 (1998): 575–610, 575

“Netherlands to Teach Asylum Seekers about LGBT Rights,” NL Times, January 25, 2016, http:// 7

www.nltimes.nl/ 2016/01/25/netherlands-to-teach-asylum-seekers-about-lgbt-rights/.

Immigration in Europe,” Public Culture Public Culture 22, no. 3 (2010): 507–29. Ibid., 519.

9

Ibid. See also, “Going Dutch By Eric Fassin | Bidoun Projects,”, http://archive.bidoun.org/magazine/

10

10-technology/going-dutch-by-eric-fassin/.

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gies are seen in the test for non-Germans applying for citizenship in Germany, and the reconciled combination of Christian history and sexual democracy in French national identity construction. 12

In this context, multiculturalism has been severely questioned and criticized; na-tionalism, originally invoked in opposition to European institutions, is shifted towards the non-European migrants. Self and Other are redefined; and social difference has been differently produced and mobilized. It becomes unclear if multiculturalism remains the key mode of liberal governance of difference. Reacting to a series of crises and cri-tiques, this periodic formation of power revolving around the governance of social dif-ference that stretches loosely between the 1960s and the present, in terms of maintain-ing liberal governmantality, is phrased as late liberalism by Povinelli. 13

What is of particular interest in this power formation, as you may have noticed from what has been laid out so far, is how the multiple, proliferating and liberating dis-course of sexuality has been reshaped, maneuvered and situated in the circulation of contemporary power structure. In a Foucauldian legacy, sexuality has been traced and analyzed as the centrality to the circulation of modern power. For instance, in the first volume of his influential work The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault argues the dis-course of sexuality as “an especially dense transfer point for relations of power… useful for the greatest number of maneuvers and capable of serving as a point of support, as a linchpin, for the most varied strategies.” He further extracts four figures, the hysterical 14

woman, masturbating child, Malthusian couple and perverse adult, respectively from four strategic unities, a hysterization of women’s bodies, a pedagogization of children’s sex, a socialization of procreative behavior, and a psychiatrization/pathologization of so-called perverse pleasure, such as homosexuality. Those four figures are analyzed as

Ibid. 12

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-ism (Duke University Press, 2011). Elizabeth Povinelli and Kim Turcot DiFruscia, A Conversation with Elizabeth Povinelli (Trans-Scripts, 2012), http://sites.uci.edu/transscripts/files/2014/10/2012_02_07.pdf. See also, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, “Defining security in late liberalism: a comment on Pedersen and Hol-braad,” in Martin Holbraad and Morten Axel Pedersen, Times of Security: Ethnographies of Fear, Protest and the Future (Routledge, 2013).

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being produced by discourses of sexuality, and also “targets and anchorage points” of the formation of power since 18th century. 15

It is noteworthy that Foucault writes about sexuality with a focus on its domi-nant strategies and figurations is out of his concern for the power structure and forma-tion in his time and where he lived. If the “adult pervert” has lost its braces that have been holding its anchorage position in the contemporary power formation and structure, especially in “Europe,” due to the broadly spread and instrumentalized “sexual democ-racy,” how differently then, is sexuality situated or integrated in the current late liberal governance of difference in “Europe”? Put in another way, how is the current late liberal governance of difference expressed, or formed, vis-à-vis sexuality, and more specifical-ly, the “adult pervert outsiders”? How and what difference is recognized, valued, po-liced or questioned, in regard to those “adult pervert outsiders" making effort in “turn[ing] the dislocations into forms of belonging,” and building relations with them16

-selves and their surroundings? And how is, in those practices, late liberal governance of difference formed, maintained, reinforced or questioned? Put in another way, how are late liberal distributions of life and goods, “of life and death, of hope and harm,” made “affectively and cognitively sensible across social difference?” 17

Interested in Foucault’s legacy in regard to power formation and structure, this thesis marks the beginning of a long quest for what remains unsolved and open in his wake. It is a quest to reveal and conceptualize the specific mode of late liberal gover-nance of social difference saturated within the sites of queer refugees and (Chinese) queer migrants in “Europe.” And it aims to open up a horizon to discuss and practice how we can govern and be governed differently, namely, the (potential) alternatives, or “otherwises" as Povinelli phrases it, to the current governance. The word “site” is par-ticularly used to emphasize first, the local formation of late liberalism with its specific historicity, and material and discursive conditions that queer refugees and migrants are producing and being imposed upon; and second, this research's focus being shifted from

Ibid., 105. 15

HKW Anthropocene, Elizabeth A. Povinelli | Keynote | The Anthropocene Project. An Opening, 2013, 16

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6TLlgTg3LQ.

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individual to the matrix of relations formed among the migrants and refugees and their surroundings. The quotation marks on Europe are used to emphasize that, first, the word “Europe” is cited from those migrants and refugees, and thus refers to individual per-ceptions and engagements of distinguishing what and where Europe or the European is, instead of a general and definitive geographical and political concept given by me; sec-ond, “Europe" concerned in this research is examined as a physical, as well as ideologi-cal and epistemic location with its respective perceived borders within and through which difference is being recognized, valued, maintained and policed on one hand, questioned and challenged on the other, vis-à-vis late liberalism.

Guided by the aforementioned questions, I start this quest with an examination of the specific mode of late liberal governance of difference within Chinese queer uni-versity students in the Netherlands and Germany. The reason for the analysis of those Chinese queer university students for this thesis is fourfold. The first reason is mental approximation and geographical convenience. The research ethics of metal approxima-tion will be explained in the methodology in Chapter Two. Secondly, Chinese queer mi-grants in the Netherlands and Germany are predominantly young students under the age of 30 pursuing advanced degrees. Thirdly, this group is relatively easy for me to get ac-cess to and build rapport and trust with than groups from other countries, or of different ages or occupations, due to my own origins. Fourthly, it will open up and explore an unexamined field with a relational and interactional approach. Most Chinese queer stud-ies have been conducted in mainland China either, followed the invention of tradition— history rewriting and literary canons rereading—as North Atlantic second-wave femi-nism went international, or aimed to challenge universalization of Western rights based gay identity and queer theories. 18

To begin revelation and conceptualization of this specific late liberal arrange-ment, in the following two chapters, I will elaborate on my theoretical and methodolog-ical framework and reflection. The theoretmethodolog-ical framework is built in response to a

Timothy Hildebrandt, “Development and Division: The Effect of Transnational Linkages and Local 18

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fication and more detailed elaboration of what late liberalism is—where late liberalism and its alternatives reside—and how it relates to individuals, such as Chinese queer mi-grants in “Europe.”

Pivoting around those questions, apart from Elizabeth Povinelli’s engagement with late liberalism and her argument of late liberal immanent critique, this framework is laid out with a critical appreciation, reflection and interpretation mainly of the follow-ing body of literature. It includes a Foucauldian analysis on neoliberalism and biopoli-tics, Manuel Delanda’s assemblage theory on social complexity in terms of understand-ing what late liberalism is. Alongside which, I will dive into Judith Butler’s argument on interdependency and relation/interaction-contoured subject-formation, and Webb Keane’s relation-based understanding of individual reflexivity, in order to discuss how late liberalism and its alternatives/otherwises relate to individuals. I argue that it is cru-cial to examine the matrix of relations built around Chinese queer university students in “Europe” with a focus on how difference is produced and made meaningful, and what is being cited, circulated, and constituted—the assemblage/arrangement of late liberal-ism—by dispersed discursive and non-discursive practices in various geographical and historical contexts.

In the methodology part, I will touch upon auto-ethnography, and Sabine Grenz's reflection on power in conducting research related to sensitive issues such as sexuality. In addition, I will elaborate on a reconsideration of culture regarding discursive and non-discursive practices, lived experience, especially migrating experience and the en-deavor of turning dislocation to a form of belonging. Alongside this, I will justify my research method and analytical approach, and reflect upon scientific credibility and rela-tional ethics.

After laying out my theoretical framework and methodology, I will start analyz-ing empirical data collected from unstructured and semi-structured interviews with five Chinese queer university students—two identified gay men, Lu and Yang; two self-identified lesbians, Su and Xi; and a heteromantic asexual man, Jie—in the Nether19

-lands and Germany. My main argument of the specific late liberal arrangement will be built across my analysis from Chapter Three to Five. Beginning with Lu, Yang, and Jie’s

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narratives of “Europe,” I will demonstrate the multitudeness hidden under similar, sometimes even identical, expressions, as well as the similarity under disparate, some-times even contradictory, narratives of “Europe” among those students. At the same time, critically relating to Homi Bhabha’s theory of mimicry, I will present the multi-plicity under the similar tendency of embracing and mimicking the “European standard.” I argue that this multiplicity not only refers to different content of the “Eu-ropean standard,” but also, and more importantly, indicates their disparate relations to their respective “Europes.”

In the analysis of Su, Xi, Lu, and Yang’s narratives regarding “China,” I will present a similar grasp of LGBT community and identity as a mere stage of an individ-ual development, and this stage-of-development discourse is also reflected in the inter-pretation of different levels of social tolerance in “China” and “Europe.” Along with the discussion on how entities are imagined, and what kinds of relations are formed be-tween individuals, and individual and entities, I will explicate how this specific percep-tion of LGBT community and identity, as well as societal change in social tolerance, relates to homosexuality construction in contemporary China.

Finally, I will draw together the aforementioned seemingly disconnected and remote practices and relations presented in the previous analysis, namely, the multiple ongoing demarcation of what and where “Europe" is and the stage-of-development dis-course regarding LGBT community and identity, and societal change, in order to present how those seemingly discrete practices and relations constitute the specific late liberal arrangement. Starting with an exemplification of Lu’s comment on an attack of gay refugees by some other refugees in an asylum, I will argue how a late liberal differential logic of demarcation and stratification reflected in demarcation of “Europe,” and the stage-of-development discourse mutually function within those sites of Su, Xi, Lu, Yang, and Jie. Besides, the mutual function of which also de-capacitates the potential radical transformation to the current arrangement and organization, and maintains late liberal governance of difference.

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Chapter One What Brought Me Here

1.1 What brought me here

In order to reveal and conceptualize the specific mode of late liberal governance of so-cial difference pertaining to Chinese queer university students in “Europe”, several questions central to this research need to be carefully examined: first, what is this arrangement (agencement)—“a host of interlocking concepts, materials, and forces that include human and nonhuman agencies and organisms” in a Deleuzian sense—of late 1

liberal governance of social difference? How does it relate to neoliberalism? Why is it revolving around governance of difference? What is its governance of difference? How and where exactly does it reside?

Second, a series of question specifically relevant for this thesis: how does late liberalism relate to Chinese queer university students in “Europe”—those individuals, their migrating experiences and endeavor of turning their dislocation into forms of be-long? Or methodologically, how to examine this late liberal arrangement from those in-dividuals and their migrating experiences and practices? More importantly, as expressed in the first volume of Elizabeth Povinelli’s examination of late liberalism in an Aus-tralian indigenous group, “how to write an account of a historical formation without fetishizing that formation, without abstracting it from its immanent social contexts, and without collapsing the social reality of that formation into ideological accounts of that formation[?]” In other words, how to conduct this research and compose this thesis 2

without diminishing those experiences and practices of Chinese queer university stu-dents, and falling into the traps of late liberalism—what are the traps?

Revolving around those questions, in this chapter and the next chapter, I will elaborate on a theoretical framework and methodology, including research credibility and ethics, in order to explain more about what brought me to this specific topic and approach, and how I started and proceeded with my research. The first chapter focuses on what brought me here. It lays out my theoretical framework that mainly answers the question of what late liberalism is and how it relates to Chinese queer university

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-ism (Duke University Press, 2011), 7.

Elizabeth A Povinelli, The Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality 2

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dents in “Europe” in relation to their migrating experiences and practices. Chapter Two, how I began and proceeded with my study, turns to my methodology that covers how I have examined and will examine the specific arrangement of late liberalism, its specific mode of governance of social difference, in relation to Chinese queer university stu-dents in “Europe.” Apart from the method I have used for this research and its limits, Chapter Two also touches upon my ethical reflection including how I have situated and will situate myself in this research.

1.2 Neoliberalism, late liberalism

During his lectures in Collège de France from 1975 to 1979, namely the trilogy Society

Must Be Defended, Security, Territory, Population, and The Birth of Biopolitics, Michel

Foucault returned to an analysis of the state and started the introduction of biopolitics, 3

a central theme that is more fully and systematically laid out later in the first volume of

The History of Sexuality. In the aforementioned trilogy, he “turn[s] to a broad set of 4

problems clustered around the question, ‘what is power?’ ” and explores his ideas on 5

“the complex relations between the three formations of power (sovereignty, discipline and biopolitics), and histories of the economic present.” Since that time, the spawn of 6

Euro-American neoliberalism, as Foucault famously describes as a specific formation in his time of biopolitical power, namely the governance over life rather than death, is be-lieved to have been taking hold and spreading globally for a long time. Along the way, neoliberalism has been further examined, and the critique of which has been developed, often with a thorough reading of Foucault’s texts, especially the aforementioned trilogy of lectures on biopolitics.

Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977--1978 (St Mar

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-tins Press, 2009). Michel Foucault et al., Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76 (New York: Picador, 2003). Michel Foucault and Michel Senellart, The birth of biopolitics: lec-tures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979 (Basingstoke [England]; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 4

1990).

Michel Foucault et al., Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76 (New 5

York: Picador, 2003), 13.

Elizabeth A Povinelli, “The Will to Be Otherwise/The Effort of Endurance,” South Atlantic Quarterly 6

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Neoliberalism has been considered a strategic response to the crisis of Keyne-sian stagflation, aiming at privatization of public funds with rhetoric of personal respon-sibility and depoliticization of public sphere. Therefore, central to neoliberalism in the 7

Foucauldian analysis, as Shannon Winnubst points out, is a neoliberal intensification of liberalism that indicates a series of transformation in categories and concepts of social difference. This transformation renders and emphasizes on human capital, and fungibil8

-ity that formalizes and transforms differences into “units of measurement that undergird market, monetary systems, and many forms of legal adjudication.” Consequently, it 9

hollows out and erases historicity and politicality from social difference, racial and ethi-cal issues from social consciousness, spawns “multiculturalism” in the late 1980s and “diversity” in the late 1990s “as the new, preferred vocabulary for social difference.” 10

In addition, it also makes “the cunning of recognition”—a dehumanized practice of de-manding indigenous or culturalized people to “demonstrate their rule by (unchanging) custom within the field of racial difference” —possible. 11

Hence, neoliberalism is not correspondent with laissez-faire liberalism which is “a social formation in which the state allows the market to proceed on the basis of one set of principles and the market allows the state to proceed on another set of principles.” Nor, obviously, is it Keynesianism. It is much more aggressive, as 12

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-ism (Duke University Press, 2011), 22. Elizabeth A. Povinelli, “Defining security in late liberal-ism: a comment on Pedersen and Holbraad,” in Martin Holbraad and Morten Axel Pedersen, Times of Security: Ethnographies of Fear, Protest and the Future (Routledge, 2013). “Interview with Elizabeth Povinelli by Mat Coleman and Kathryn Yusoff,” Society and Space, March 6, 2014, http://societyandspace.com/mater-ial/interviews/interview-with-elizabeth-povinelli-by-mat-coleman-and-kathryn-yusoff/. See also, Shannon Winnubst, Way Too Cool: Selling Out Race and Ethics (Columbia University Press, 2015).

Shannon Winnubst, Way Too Cool: Selling Out Race and Ethics (Columbia University Press, 2015). 8

Ibid., 18. 9

Ibid. 10

Elizabeth A. Povinelli, “What’s Love Got to Do with It? The Race of Freedom and the Drag Of De

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-scent,” Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice 49, no. 2 (Summer 2005): 173–81, 178. Brackets added by me. See more detailed discussion in, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism (Duke Uni-versity Press, 2002). See also, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, The Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006). And Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism (Duke University Press, 2011).

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Povinelli further elaborates on the social rationality and governmentality of neoliberal-ism.

[n]eoliberals did not merely wish to free the economy from the Keynesian regu-latory state; they wished to free the truth games of capitalism from the market itself—the market should be the general measure of all social activities and val-ues…. Any form of life that could not produce values according to market logic would not merely be allowed to die, but, in situations in which the security of the market (and since the market was now the raison d’être of the state, the state) seemed at stake, ferreted out and strangled. 13

The specific transformation of the market as “the general measure,” as well as social rationality being market-oriented and strictly guarded and secured in neoliberalism, re-flects that the neoliberal market has been rendered as a “normative achievement.” Be14

-sides, That the market has become the measure of “all social activities and values” indi-cates that, on the one hand, instead of being a singular social phenomenon, neoliberal-ism resides in various practices in different historical and geographical dimensions, and its mode of governance varies from context to context; on the other hand, those various modes of neoliberalism spatially and temporally dispersed in disparate contexts consti-tute neoliberalism in terms of being related and aggregated as they secure the neoliberal existence.

In this sense, neoliberalism is not a thing in the general sense of the term, but exists “in its continual citation as the motivating logic and aspiration of dispersed and competing social and cultural” activities and values regulated and oriented towards the 15

market as a “normative achievement.” It is thus an arrangement, or assemblage, ac16

-cording to Manuel DeLanda’s assemblage theory in his philosophy of society. In other words, it is an assemblages [arrangements] made up of parts [dispersions] which are

Ibid., 21-22. 13

Wendy Brown, “American Nightmare: Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and De-Democratization,” 14

Political Theory 34, no. 6 (2006): 690–714, quoted in Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Economies of Abandon-ment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism (Duke University Press, 2011), 22.

(Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 13.

Wendy Brown, “American Nightmare: Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and De-Democratization,” 16

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“self-subsistent and articulated by relations of exteriority [what is circulated and cited in, and constituted by the dispersions].” 17

Developed in Western Europe and the North Atlantic in terms of motivating, conjuring, aggregating and evaluating social activities, neoliberalism has been spread to the global terrain in the practice of the motivating, conjuring, aggregating and evaluat-ing, and rendered a broader neoliberal arrangement made up of various modes of local governance shifting and specified in different historical moments. Initially, this arrangement may not have had any substantial reference, however, “overtime the mater-ial and discursive conditions…change to meet and mirror the presumptions” of it. In 18

other words, if neoliberalism seeks to exist and maintain its governance, it has to be continually and repetitively cited in various practices that produce various substances.

In the wake of 9/11 attack and the European refugee crisis in 2015, the civiliza-tional rhetoric articulating with naciviliza-tional and internaciviliza-tional security started to surface in politics of recognition—multiculturalism was claimed to be “utterly failed” —along 19

with “a robust defense of Western liberal principles.” During the same period, the 20

global financial crisis in 2008 evoked the argument of the end of neoliberalism and cap-italism, while “a world of diverse economic formations” were envisioned in defense of capitalism. Liberalism has entered “a new stage of reflexivity;” the concepts and cat21 22

-egories of social difference are again undergoing a transformation, and social difference, along with the politics of recognition, starts to be produced and made meaningful differ-ently.

At the same time, the Foucauldian biopolitical power with its governance over life rather than death, especially its division of life and death, has also been challenged and questioned as being insufficient to explain the dynamics in the dispersion of liberal

Manuel DeLanda, A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity (London; 17

New York: Continuum, 2006), 18. Brackets added by me.

(Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 15.

Matthew Weaver and agencies, “Angela Merkel: German Multiculturalism Has ‘Utterly Failed,’” The 19

Guardian, October 17, 2010, sec. World news, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/17/angela-merkel-german- multiculturalism-failed.

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-ism (Duke University Press, 2011), 28. Ibid., 28.

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governance. For instance, Agamben examined the intensified space of bíos and zoē (bare life); Povinelli revealed geontopower that maintains the division between life 23

and non-life, rather than death, in posthuman critique. Social critique starts to abandon 24

its anthroprocentric tradition, and embrace an ecological and materialist turn to combine posthuman and assemblage/arrangement theories. 25

It is at this crucial moment that late liberalism, in replacement of neoliberalism, is concatenated as a phrase by Povinelli to capture and emphasize both the current liber-al mode of governance, and how liberliber-alism maintains its governance in spite of its criti-cism, and its history of dramatic transformations and spatially dispersed mutations. 26

Therefore, late liberalism is late, not in the sense that it comes after neoliberalism, but as “it never catches up with or gains a hold of itself:” firstly, it responds to a series of 27

criticism and legitimacy crises since the late 1960s; secondly, it responds to and is

al-ways disturbed by the various factual historical and geographical elements and

condi-tions through its dispersion, and thus by the (potential) “otherwise [alternative arrange-ments to late liberalism] it finds and produces in this dispersion.” In this regard, late 28

liberalism is not external to neoliberalism. Rather, it shares the same nature of being an arrangement as and partially overlaps with neoliberalism. However, it is considered with a shifted focusing period, and a broader, as well as more specific aim of revealing and conceptualizing liberal governmentality.

If late liberalism responds to and is always disturbed by the (potential) other-wise, it is constantly caught up in dealing with the yet-conformed, the yet-familiar dif-ference, as well as (potential) variations to the existing arrangement of the different in the ever-changing local contexts. In addition, as the different and those (potential) varia-tions are seedbed for criticism and crises that late liberalism also responds to, central to

Giorgio Agamben and Daniel Heller-Roazen, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, 23

CA: Stanford University Press, 1998).

Elizabeth A. Povinelli, “The Rhetorics of Recognition in Geontopower,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 48, no. 24

4 (2015): 428–42.

See, for instance, Manuel De Landa, A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social 25

Complexity (London; New York: Continuum, 2006).

Elizabeth A. Povinelli, “Defining security in late liberalism: a comment on Pedersen and Holbraad,” in 26

Martin Holbraad and Morten Axel Pedersen, Times of Security: Ethnographies of Fear, Protest and the Future (Routledge, 2013).

Ibid., 32. 27

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both late liberalism and its criticism, is how to deal with the different. Therefore, on the one hand, late liberalism is an arrangement, a periodic formation of power revolving

around governance of difference, which is made up of various modes of its local

disper-sions. On the other hand, the examination and criticism of late liberalism is required to focus on the different—both conformed and yet-conformed—and the (potential) arrangement of the different, in late liberal local dispersions—the Chinese queer univer-sity students in this case—and their constitution, in order to open up a horizon to dis-cuss and practice the alternatives/otherwise of late liberalism.

However, what and where is the different? Also what and where is the other-wise? How to approach to it? And more specifically, how does it relate to individuals, such as Chinese queer university students in “Europe”? Are they the different found and produced? Or are they finding and producing the different? Are they both of them or neither? First of all, it is worthwhile to have a look at how the otherwise, along with the different, has been examined and discussed so far.

1.3 Immanent critique and its problems: a summary and interpretation

of Povinelli’s criticism

29

In contemporary social critique, an active interest has been specifically taken in the

oth-erwise. The otherwise has been argued as a Foucauldian and Deleuzian truth-speaking

or freedom-exercising (dire vrai, parrhesia). Particularly, those that rupture and re-char-acterize previous arrangements have been the focus of attention. For instance, in citi-zenship studies, Engin Isin elaborately argues the importance of “acts” which he defines as “standing in contrast to habitus,” breaking through established order, the “script,” 30

and “bring[ing] into being new actors as activist citizens (that is, claimants of rights).” 31

He specifically notes, “by theorizing acts, or attempting to constitute acts as an object of

29

-ism (Duke University Press, 2011). And HKW Anthropocene, Elizabeth A. Povinelli | Keynote | The An-thropocene Project. An Opening, 2013, accessed February 19, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=W6TLlgTg3LQ. See also, Elizabeth A Povinelli, “The Will to Be Otherwise/The Effort of Endurance,” South Atlantic Quarterly South Atlantic Quarterly 111, no. 3 (2012): 453–75.

Engin F. Isin and Greg Marc Nielsen, Acts of Citizenship (London; New York; New York: Zed Books 30

Ltd. ; Distributed in the USA by Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). See also, Engin F. Isin, “Citizenship in Flux: The Figure of the Activist Citizen,” Subjectivity 29, no. 1 (December 2009): 367–88.

Engin F. Isin, “Citizenship in Flux: The Figure of the Activist Citizen,” Subjectivity 29, no. 1 (Decem

31

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analysis, we must focus on rupture rather than order but a rupture that enables the actor (that the act creates) to create a scene rather than follow a script.” This form of social 32

critique falls in the category of immanent critique, as it sees the otherwise being built into, or immanent to, arrangements, since every arrangement is formed with its own po-tential de-arrangements and rearrangements.

In this regard, instead of looking for the essence of a thing, immanent critique probes the possibilities of other forms of existence. In Deleuzian phrasing, it asks what makes an event take place, and what makes one event, among all the (potential) events, more decisively rupture the present and becomes dominant. Truth is thus “a kind of practice that opens the field of truth and in the process exposes the truth and the subject to a number of permutations whose effects the subject cannot yet know.” Freedom in 33

this sense is no longer a practice of being liberated, but a practice of being otherwise. It is out of this desire and interest that Foucault turns from his examination of power to discussion of ethics in terms of arguing the meaning, significance and necessity of the ethical practice of speaking truth in the last two volumes of The History of Sexuality. 34

The freer and truer the becoming, the more “other,” thus more “eventful” it will be—the more likely it will become an event to rupture the current arrangement, and then take hold. However, simultaneously, the more existential risk it faces. As a conse-quence, practices of this paradoxical analytics foregrounds the space of virtuality, or po-tentiality, especially for those “quasi-events,” or “becoming-events” as Lauren 35 36

Berlant puts it, that are neither absolutely “true” and “Free,” nor absolutely “untrue” or “unfree”. In other words, for immanent critique, the space of those “quasi/becoming-events,” that is to say, “the perpetual variation between…striving to persevere [a force

Ibid., 379. 32

Elizabeth A Povinelli, citing Foucault, Le gouvernement de soi, 60, in “The Will to Be Otherwise/The 33

Effort of Endurance,” South Atlantic Quarterly South Atlantic Quarterly 111, no. 3 (2012): 453–75, 459 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure (Knopf Doubleday Publishing 34

Group, 2012). Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3: The Care of the Self (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2012).

35

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of existing, vis existendi] and any actual idea or action that emerges from this striving [potentia agendi],” is considered to be where the otherwise can/is possible to emerge. 37

In spite of the foregrounded space of potentiality, much emphasis of current im-manent critical theories, however, is laid upon a specific actualization of an event, and the conditions of the actualization, such as the aforementioned Isin's argument of “the act of citizenship". It requires intensification of a certain division between a freedom-exercising self and an entity that the self is against and trying to rupture, as well as the Foucauldian “ascesis,” the severe exercise of the self in the division—to constitute the self to be strong to withstand the rupture and taking hold. Truth-speaking, or freedom-exercising, thus becomes self-authorized and individual practice that stresses the pro-foundness of the self-will.

This emphasis, however, has left several crucial questions unexplored, or not even raised. For instance, before the actualization of an event, namely, the breaking through of the self—not to mention the self/event becoming dominant—how do/can the self endure its effort of existing? How can it endure, if it both dwells and is sheltered in that space of virtuality, due to the fact that the more potential it is to become an event, the more suicidal its existence and potentiation is?

Moreover, when starting his musing on ascesis, namely, the ethical practice of speaking truth, Foucault has taken for granted that although this truth-speaking is given to oneself as well as to the others at the same time, only some practice it. The reason for which, however, has been left unexplored. What he has not asked are the following 38

questions: why, in particular contexts, are some able to practice the truth-speaking while others are not—why, how, and on what ground are some truth-speaking adjudicated to be more potential, thus more potentiated, among a variety of the self? Even if the pro-foundness of the self-will were the decisive factor, why and how is it possessed uneven-ly? Put in another way, if all “the selves” “exist in the variation between vis existence and potentia agendi and between modes of being and not being,” why and how is “the

Elizabeth A. Povinelli, citing Deleuze, in Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and En

37

-durance in Late Liberalism (Duke University Press, 2011), 9.

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure (Knopf Doubleday Publishing 38

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intensity of this variation and its zoning are neither uniform nor uniformly distributed?” 39

Those questions have become especially acute, as extinguishment is internal to potentiation. That is to say, potentiation of a certain self-will either accelerate the extin-guishment of the self, since, as mentioned above, the “truer” and “freer” the self is, the more suicidal the existence and freedom/truth-practice of it will be; or lead to an actual-ization of the self that will extinguish not only the present arrangement, but also the specific space of potentiality—along with other potential “selves”—where the self dwelled in. This is the fact that has been left unconsidered by immanent critique.

As a result, the emphasis on the certain type of actualization in an intensified division between a freedom-exercising self and its antagonistic entity, has further opened up the space of potentiality for late liberal governance of difference to easily sneak in, especially for its politics of recognition—figuring out an opposite position in an intended division in order to be included without any fundamental disruptions. In the name of recognition, late liberalism extends its rationality, its standard of adjudication, and its material support in terms of determining what and how “truth-speaking” or “freedom-exercising” can be practiced. In this context, what mattered is not what or how the otherwise, or the self, is pulled into being, but if the pulling into being succeed-ed. The endurance, the uneven intensity of variation, and the extinguishment, however, remain neglected and unexplored. The space of potentiality thus has become a specific mode of suffering that is mired in perpetual antagonistic divisions and “cruel optimism,” as it both reduces being yet allows the possibility of being otherwise at the 40

same time.

Therefore, instead of taking for granted that a certain space, group or individual is, or has the potentiality to be, the otherwise, and rushing into what makes it possible to potentiate the (potential) different to rupture the current late liberal governance, a thor-ough examination of the late liberal way of producing and dealing with the different is required. It is particularly required to do a thorough examination of the different’s en-durance, uneven intensity of variation between to be and not to be, and the

39

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ment that the actualization has brought or will bring. In other words, instead of falling into and departing from the divisional world projected by late liberalism, especially its politics of recognition, it is more crucial to see how difference is recognized, ignored, valued, strengthened or questioned in the space of dwelling and endurance.

However, how does this examination relate to individuals? Where and when do they come into play? In other words, how do individuals, their existence—subject for-mation and social activities—involve in the late liberal way of producing and dealing with the different, the space of potentiality, and the freedom of being otherwise? What is the space of potentiality and the freedom of being otherwise concealed and de-capaci-tated under the late liberalism?

1.4 Subject formation, interdependency/connectivity/relationality and

freedom

In her Sense of the Subject, Judith Butler elaborates on subject formation, norms and 41

relationality by rejecting the idea that the subject is simply composed of norms, or that it is fully self-forming. Following and further developing her argument, subject forma42

-tion vis-à-vis norms and rela-tionality can be explained as follows. Prior to the becoming of the subject—this “I”—one is affected, conditioned, and acted upon by norms, due to the fact that it is already proximately and involuntarily impressed by established norms in a material condition. That is to say, similar to Heidegger’s thrownness, we are born with immanent connectivity among us and our surroundings, including humans and nonhumans that exist as an arrangement arranged with clusters of interconnected norms. Those clusters of interconnected norms with spatial and temporal dimensions and mate-rial conditions register our affects in certain ways—“they [the norms] require and inten-sify our impressionality.” Those affects then enter into our thinking and speaking—the 43

Instead of seeing norms as unattainable “normative injunctions” that can be undone or mitigated 41

against by being exposed as “a regulatory fiction,” or “the prescriptive requirements whereby sexed or gendered bodies come into cultural intelligibility,” Butler here takes a more Foucauldian approach to norms and sees them as necessary and immanent coordinates of modern subjecthood. For more discussion on the difference in understanding of norms between Butler and Foucault, see A. Jagose, “The Trouble with Antinormativity,” Differences 26, no. 1 (January 1, 2015): 26–47, doi:10.1215/10407391-2880591. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York, NY [etc.: Routledge, 2006). And Michel Foucault, The history of sexuality (London: Penguin, 1990).

Judith Butler, Senses of the Subject (New York : Fordham University Press, 2015), https://muse.jhu.e

42

-du/books/9780823264704/. Ibid., 5.

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utterance of “I”. Along the way, the immanent connectivity, which often was initially 44

delicate bindings, is (not) being continually nurtured and enriched into various types of relations. 45

This formation does not fall away because of some breaks or disruptions of the norms—which are very likely to happen during dislocation and migration of the Chi-nese queer university students in “Europe” examined in this thesis. Rather, they live within us as historicity. At the same time, this historicity indicates that we are not de-termined in advance. Therefore, “I” am a continuous and repeated formative activity. 46

More importantly, this formative activity is grounded on relationality, namely relation with alterity, including humans and non-humans, that makes “I” become a being with susceptibility and impressionality on one hand, intensifies the susceptibility and impes-sionality and capacitates “I” to act, on the other. In other words, it is this extimate eth47

-ical dependency on others that grounds “I”, and simultaneously defines “I”, and many other “I”s.

In her latest work Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, Butler takes a material turn from discourse to bodily appearance, and further develops her philosophical reflection on relationality into a political theory of interdependency. In 48

this volume, she approaches human as a site of interdependency, and argues that “part of what a body [including humans and nonhumans] is (and this is for the moment an on49

-tological claim) is its dependency on other bodies and networks of support.” Thus in50

-dividual bodies are neither “completely distinct from one another,” nor are they “blend-ed into some amorphous social body.” Moreover, as she incisively points out in a lec51

-ture:

Ibid. 44

Povinelli, Elizabeth, and Kim Turcot DiFruscia. A Conversation with Elizabeth Povinelli.

Trans-45

Scripts, 2012. http://sites.uci.edu/transscripts/files/2014/10/2012_02_07.pdf, 84.

Judith Butler, Senses of the Subject (New York : Fordham University Press, 2015), https://muse.jhu.e

46

-du/books/9780823264704/. Ibid.

47

Judith Butler, Notes toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard 48

University Press, 2015).

These brackets are added by me. 49

Ibid., 130. 50

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if we cannot readily conceptualize the political meaning of the human body without understanding those relations in which it lives and thrives, we fail to make the best possible case for the various political ends we seek to achieve. … [I]t is not just that this or that body is bound up in a network of relations, but that the body…, precisely by virtue of those very boundaries, is defined by the rela-tions that makes its own life and acrela-tions possible. 52

Indeed, if human beings are ultimately interdependent, and are defined and contoured by the very relations and interactions, it becomes clearer that self-authorized freedom, individualization of the practice of being liberated and being otherwise in an antagonis-tic divided world, is nothing but a mere fantasy. It is a fantasy that has been tacantagonis-tically used to project a divisional world—to produce material and discursive conditions—for late liberal politics of recognition, such as multiculturalism.

On the contrary, as Butler further argues, freedom needs to be considered on the ground of the interdependent and relational subject formation.

Freedom does not come from me or from you; it can and does happen as a rela-tion between us, or indeed, among us [including humans and non-humans]. So this is not a matter of finding the human dignity within each person, but rather of understanding the human as a relational and social being. 53

Therefore, instead of a practice of being otherwise as an individual or an entity that brings relational change, freedom is a practice of being otherwise to the existing rela-tions, namely, a transformation of relarela-tions, which then brings changes in subject form-ing, defining and contouring.

Similar to Butler’s shift from individual to relations and her focus on interde-pendency, Webb Keane also argues on subjectivation, reflexivity—central to a Fou-cauldian truth-speaking and freedom-exercising—and freedom within a relational framework. He believes freedom to be emergent in interaction with other people, 54

which cannot be confined to inner thought or to individuals, since reflexivity itself is not a closed, but relational and international process. In the beginning of this argument, he starts with a discussion on James Laidlaw’s concern that sociological determination— such as Foucault’s writing on subjectivation being molded in “the models that [the

Judith Butler, “Rethinking Vulnerability and Resistance,” Lecture, Madrid, 2014, 4. 52

Judith Butler, Notes toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard 53

University Press, 2015), 88-89. Brackets added by me.

Webb Keane, “Freedom, Reflexivity, and the Sheer Everydayness of Ethics,” HAU: Journal of Ethno

54

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vidual] finds in his culture and are proposed, suggested, imposed upon him by his cul-ture, his society, his social group” —breeds dichotomization of individual and society. 55

In order to go beyond sociological determination, Keane suggests a shift from collective, not to individual, but to reject the opposition between individual and collec-tive, and rethink individual choices and the Foucauldian speaking truth and exercising freedom vis-à-vis a reexamination of the conditions of reflexivity. Instead of being an 56

inner state of individuals in terms of thinking and feeling about themselves, reflexivity is argued to be functioning in a series of interactions that relate multi-layered self and other. That is to say, reflexivity emerges in a certain type of relation and interaction, for it objectifies the self and talks with it by introducing a second-person addressee, or “semiotic stand-ins for the second person” as Keane puts it, in order to take up a third-57

person perspective on oneself—“[the conduct of freedom] is not mine alone, but mine

in response to, and drawing responses from, others [including myself as an other].” 58

Hence, freedom is no longer a divisional individual practice against another enti-ty, but occurs within exchanges, which indicates its fundamental constitution of connec-tivity and relationality. Freedom thus cannot be assessed by the profoundness of the lib-erating will, but needs to be considered within the immanent connectivity, such as how and why a certain kind of connectivity is (not) made possible to be continually nurtured, cared for, enriched and intensified towards a stronger binding. Individuals—their exis-tence and various practices—serve as a number of the ends locating those various con-nections and relations, and are interconnected, forming and being formed by them.

1.5 Conclusion

In sum, if connections, relations and interactions define, contour and bind individuals and their surroundings, which provide the ground for individual practices, and those

Michel Foucault, Paul Rabinow, and Robert Hurley, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth (New Press, 1997), 55

291. Cited by James Laidlaw, The Subject of Virtue: An Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom (Cam-bridge University Press, 2013), 102, and is again cited in Webb Keane, “Freedom, Reflexivity, and the Sheer Everydayness of Ethics,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4, no. 1 (June 16, 2014): 443–57, doi:10.14318/hau4.1.027, 453.

Webb Keane, “Freedom, Reflexivity, and the Sheer Everydayness of Ethics,” HAU: Journal of Ethno

56

-graphic Theory 4, no. 1 (June 16, 2014): 443–57, doi:10.14318/hau4.1.027. Ibid., 452.

57

Ibid., 453. Brackets added by me.

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practices in turn shape and reshape those connections, relations and interactions, the space of potentiality is no longer formed within an antagonistic division between inde-pendent individual and society. Rather, it is constituted by the dynamic formative and relational activities that continually and repeatedly relate, contour and define individual entities including humans and nonhumans. And within the crucial space of ongoing formative and relational activities, production and arrangement of difference takes place.

If late liberalism needs to maintain its arrangement, it has to be cited in those activities. Connections, relations and interactions thus have to be formed in a certain way, which is to say, every constituting part of those connections, relations and interac-tions has to be maintained in a specific position and order to keep those connecinterac-tions, relations and interactions in place. This means that those constituting parts have to be differentiated and measured so that they can be arranged into an order. And late liberal-ism decides what difference will make a distinction, and what measurement will be ap-plied to assess those differences and put them into a particular order.

Based on the arranged differences, relations and interactions are formed in a cer-tain way, and individuals are defined who they are. In turn, based on who they are, indi-viduals form relations and interactions in a certain way, the arranged differences are re-inforced. Within this circulation, late liberalism is taken up in individuals as coordinate subject-hood that motivates and directs how difference is recognized and valued, and thus how relations are formed. In Chinese queer university students’ migration to “Eu-rope" and their endeavor of turning dislocation into a form of belonging, relations and interactions forming and being formed by those individuals change along the way of dislocation and relocation; difference recognized and valued is also being shuffled and rearranged in this relational and interactional process of subject formation. Therefore, it is crucial to see how late liberal governance of difference comes into play in their vari-ous practices.

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lo-cal. It is crucial to avoid the more dangerous trap of late liberal division, such as reduc-ing discourses and practices of those individuals to an oversimplified and crude di-chotomy of either embracing, or challenging liberal values and logic claiming to come from Western Europe and the North Atlantic. Instead, it needs to start with a shifted fo-cus on the relations and interactions among individuals and their surroundings, as well as late liberal arrangement formed within—how and why they are (not) nurtured or in-tensified, what the transformation or intensification of those relations will bring, and what is being cited, circulated and constituted among those seemingly discrete, remote and sometimes even contradictory discourses and practices of relation building.

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Chapter Two How I Began and Proceeded My Study

2.1 Unstructured interviewing and five participants

Since this marks the first step of my research that aims at revealing and conceptualizing late liberalism within the sites of queer refugees and queer (Chinese) migrants in “Eu-rope,” unstructured in-depth personal interviewing is taken up as the main research method. It is specifically chosen for the following reasons. First, it is “excellent for 1

building initial rapport” with participants. Second, it is “perfect for talking to infor2

-mants who would not tolerate a more formal interview,” which is particularly the case 3

of this research, since it touches upon private and sensitive issues, such as participants’ personal lives, sexuality, racial or ethnic prejudice, and hot political topics. Third, al4

-though most of the participants were reached in a snowball way, they are not in any common communities or groups. Nor are they close friends who spend time talking or doing activities with each other, which makes other methods, such as participatory ob-servation inapplicable.

Therefore, in 2015 and 2016, several unstructured in-depth personal interviews and a few semi-structured follow-up interviews were conducted with five Chinese queer university students—four enrolled at two Dutch universities, and one at a German uni-versity. Xi and Su are two self-identified lesbians, Lu and Yang are two self-identified 5

gay men, while Jie is a self-identified heteromantic asexual man. The interviews, with-out presence of a third party, were all led by the five students at places where they feel most comfortable to open up. The interviews were conducted in Chinese, digitally recorded, transcribed and translated into English by myself.

What the five students have touched upon during the interviews can be roughly divided into the following nine interrelated categories: 1. life in Europe and in China,

For future extension and development of this research project, apart from in-depth personal unstructured 1

interviewing, semi-structured ethnographic interviewing, filming, field observation and participation will be incorporated in order to go beyond linguistic limitation and anthropocentrism, and achieve an ecologi-cal grasp of the co-constitution of various interpretative forces.

H. Russell Bernard, Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches, 5th 2

ed (Lanham, Md: AltaMira Press, 2011), 158. Ibid.

3

Ibid., 159. 4

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such as difference lifestyle, their upbringing backgrounds, habits and hobbies; 2. friends, including their friends’ nationality, personality, characteristics, activities they usually do with them; 3. thorough self introduction, during which their favorite books, movies and people, judgments from others, and the turning points in the process of growing up, including personal experiences that had a significant influence on them were mentioned and explained; 4. love life, including their past and present relation-ships, availability, attitudes, partner preferences; 5. openness, meaning the level of com-ing out of the closet to their friends and family, and demands and constraints they feel in this regard; 6. Chinese and European society in terms of integration and tolerance; 7. Chinese and European LGBT communities and queer people; 8. different groups in sex-ual minority and other minorities; 9. hot political topics, such as multiculturalism, and refugee crisis in 2015 and its impact.

Not all of the aforementioned nine categories are touched upon by those five student—their focus, interests, and what they are willing and able to share vary from person to person. Therefore, in the analysis, not all of them are presented in each of the chapters. Instead, the analysis tries to reveal what is being cited and circulated, and what is being constituted by the dispersed and various practices in terms of recognizing and evaluating difference.

In this regard, during the interviews, I specifically focused on narratives and ar-ticulations of differences in terms of their relations with themselves and their surround-ings—how they recognize and value difference in terms of seeking and building rela-tionship with the new places, partners, interacting with parents, and other races and mi-norities, dealing with their own past and conflicts, mobilizing themselves for career or study. Particularly, as late liberalism is “located nowhere but in its continual citation as the motivating logic and aspiration” in dispersed individual practices, I pay attention to 6

their rational and moral expressions—how they try to make sense of things to sustain their current form of existence. For instance, when some of the five students articulate self-transformations, how the extinguishment of a form of existence is coupled with the emergence of another, how the coupled extinguishment and emergence of forms of

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tence specifically matter to the individual, and how this is also rationalized in their rela-tions to others.

2.2 Analysis: from dislocation to forms of belonging—why I moved

away from an identity-centered, intersectional and transcultural

ap-proach

If we understand that late liberalism is taken up as coordinate subject-hood that moti-vates and directs how difference is recognized and valued, how relations are formed, and thus how subject is defined and contoured, it becomes clear that late liberalism ex-erts an impact “at a deeper, richer level with immanent forms of social” relations beyond given formations of identity. In a similar vein, the problem of intersectionality unfolds 7

itself in this understanding.

Instead of questioning and complicating why a certain identification is signifi-cant to the arrangement, “recognition and transmission of value,” as Angela Mitropou-los has also pointed out in her Contract and Contagion, intersectionality departs from “the question of discrete identities in order to think their intersections.” It thus results 8

in an impasse that tends to return either in forms of modification or extension, such as “the shift from the phrase ‘gay and lesbian’ to that of LGBTI,” or “to the question of which identity might be more oppressed than another.” 9

Therefore, as a research aiming at revealing and conceptualizing a specific mode of power formation impacting at a deeper level beyond identity, I moved away from an identity-centered or intersectional approach in the following analysis of the five stu-dents’ narratives of “Europe” . Those narratives are gathered for analysis as they signif10

-icantly concern those five students’ discursive practices of turning dislocation to forms of belonging. Hence, they are mostly in relation to their disparate migrating experience

Elizabeth Povinelli and Kim Turcot DiFruscia, A Conversation with Elizabeth Povinelli (Trans-Scripts, 7

2012), http://sites.uci.edu/transscripts/files/2014/10/2012_02_07.pdf.

Angela Mitropoulos, Contract and Contagion: From Biopolitics to Oikonomia (Minor Compositions, 8

2012), 62-63.

Ibid., 63. See also, Michael Rectenwald, “What’s Wrong With Identity Politics (and Intersectionality 9

Theory)? A Response to Mark Fisher’s ‘Exiting the Vampire Castle’ (And Its Critics),” December 2, 2013, http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=11411.

That said, it does not mean that I will proceed my analysis without any reference of identity formation 10