‘Paris’ and ‘scar’: queer social reproduction, homonormative division of labour and HIV/AIDS economy in postsocialist China

Abstract

This essay explores the imbrications between queer precarity and social reproduction from the perspective of homonormative division of labour. Contextualizing the emergence of China’s HIV/AIDS economy and its reliance on queer intimate labour, it argues that the homonormative division of labour are part and parcel to maintain and nurture the economic, political structures of LGBT liberalism. Instead of providing ‘local case’ of homonormativity, this paper connects the normalizing power on sexuality and bodies to the larger geography of transnational labour division and conditions of labour precarity, providing an analysis of South-focused political economy of homonormativity. Arguing against viewing precarity as an overarching global phenomenon, this essay centres on lived experiences of the queer ‘precariat’ and highlights the contradiction and interplay of agency and conformity. Reclaiming the Chinese queer lexicon tongzhi (comrades), not only as a sexual identity, but as queer sociality where desires and work converge, this essay cautions against narrowly defined but broadly circulated concepts such as ‘oppression’, ‘resistance’, ‘social movement’ and ‘community’ that are predominantly derived from Western centric political imagination and activist space.