Asian American Studies and LGBTQ Studies: Horizons of Intersectional Alliances

Abstract

Asian American Studies and LGBTQ StudiesHorizons of Intersectional Alliances Martin F. Manalansan IV (bio) This essay is a brief reflection on the rich intersectional history of Asian American Studies and LGBTQ studies through an autoethnographic account. It focuses on the emergence of productive conjunctions between the two fields as framed by my own career trajectory in academia and community activism. I want to note that this is not an ego-boosting attempt to locate myself as an exemplary case, but I will unabashedly admit that I was a fortunate witness to and an avid participant in the provenance of the continuing fruitful alliances between the two fields. I map these historical and theoretical meeting points as products of historical and biographical encounters and conditions. I believe the "state" of the fields should not be considered as a description of a present condition but rather, as critical assessment of a process, a persistent unfolding, and a continuous voyage of several communities of scholars. At the heart of this essay is not just a story or a history but rather a reflection on enduring questions that have propelled this intellectual crossroad. I offer an invitation or provocation to scholars to take risks, and to listen more closely and sensitively to the evolving world and to lives on the ground. The "roots" of this intersectional history of the two fields are a product of sensitive, activist, and community responses to problems on existing social injustices. As I will point out later, there is a danger in the institutionalization and official recognition of the works coming out of these conjoined fields, especially around the initial impulse for such collaborations which was taking responsibility to engage with ever-increasing and continuing crises of racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and extreme economic disparities. At [End Page 11] the end, I briefly gesture to the problems of institutionalization and suggest kernels of a possible future. STREET KNOWLEDGE When I was in graduate school studying for a doctoral degree in anthropology, I was trained as a Southeast Asian Studies scholar. Like many fields in area studies, some countries and cultures were "trendier," more "fundable" or deemed more strategically important than others. My kind dissertation adviser, who conducted fieldwork in the Philippines, very seriously told me that to be a "marketable" Southeast Asian Studies scholar in anthropology (a region already disparaged for its lack of strategic relevance especially after the Vietnam war) that I should focus on Indonesia since it was the treasure trove of anthropological curiosities. The turning point that marked my shift from traditional anthropological area studies to both Asian American and LGBTQ studies was the major turn in the AIDS pandemic in the late 1980s. By that time, the pandemic started devastating communities of people of color, poor people, drug users, and immigrants. After years of living in a bucolic university town in western New York, the sense of safety and distance from the ongoing epidemic slowly fell apart. By 1986, several of the Filipino gay men I met in New York City were coming down with AIDS, some of whom died within the next two years. It was that moment that spurred me to change my dissertation topic from Islamic education in Sumatra, Indonesia, which was a matrilineal society (where the lineage was traced through mother line)–a classic ethnographic topic if there ever was one. I told my adviser that I wanted to study AIDS among Filipino gay men first in San Francisco, then, due to lack of funding, I chose New York where I already had a network of Asian American, primarily Filipino American, gay men. My adviser was naturally disappointed, but like all generous dissertation advisers, he cautioned me that I would be unemployable and that I was taking a major risk that may damage my professional future. Nevertheless, he allowed me the freedom to explore unchartered intellectual and social landscapes despite the dangers and risks involved. When I arrived in New York City to supposedly start my fieldwork in 1989, I became involved in GAPIMNY (Gay Asian Pacific Islander Men of New York) and I helped found Kambal sa Lusog, a Filipino American gay and lesbian group. To fund my research...