Provincial Drag in the Philippine Tropics: Towards a Decolonial Queer Tropical Aesthetics

Abstract

Drag, in its neoliberal permutation, has become the most consumed queer art form everywhere in the world. The popularity of drag is often attributed to the bourgeoning empire of the Drag Race franchise. While the cultural phenomenon that is Drag Race has constructed a platform for drag to thrive in the mainstream scene, it has also created a limited and hegemonic understanding of drag as simply glamour and superstardom. This essay problematizes what has become “homonormative drag” and outlines the need to turn to pluriversal drag aesthetic praxes. It is argued that deploying a decolonial queer tropical lens, following Rolando Vazquez’s decolonial aesthesis and Samantha Nöel’s tropical aesthetics, opens our understanding of drag to situated local experiences in the tropics. This essay, unpacks the aesthetics of what I call “provincial drag,” found in the digital content produced by queer subjects in the Philippine provinces, to illustrate and re-locate the critical function of drag not simply for gender subversion, but also to laugh at neoliberal and colonial projects.