Beyond heteronormativity? Gay cruising, closeted experiences and self-disciplining subject in People’s Park, Guangzhou

Abstract

© 2016 Taylor & FrancisIn this paper, I examine relationships between public space, gay people’s cruising and construction of gay subjectivity in People’s Park, Guangzhou, China. In particular, I interrogate the complex dynamics between the performance of homosexual identity and the dominant heteronormative ideologies in China’s cultural–political sphere. I articulate how public cruising can be mobilized as a space of alternative socio-spatial ordering and simultaneously a closeted space to experience and reassert hegemonic divides of public/private, normal/abnormal. This paper employs an analysis of self-disciplining and the production of docile bodies to examine how gay cruisers construct gayness as deviant identity and thus attempt to reconcile gay subjects with dominant norms and values. The production of self-disciplining subjects is centered on the discursive formulation that gay men in public need to act in self-regulated and “low-profile” ways. This paper intends to enrich our understanding of the intrinsically dialectical relationships between public space and sexual subjectivity in concrete time spaces.