The work ‘ethics’: negotiating a neoliberalized and respectable lesbian citizenship in a group of ‘post-90s’ Chinese lesbians’ discourses

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article offers a discursive analysis of two sets of interview data, out of a corpus of ten in-depth interviews, where young Chinese lesbians (born in the 1990 s) performatively negotiate an acceptable lesbian citizenship. Findings suggest that this lesbian citizenship, made in strong comparison with heteronormative citizenship, is constructed discursively as a triad between the individual, the corporate and the society in the participants’ discourses. The subjects’ capacity to work is framed as essential to this citizenship. More specifically, the participants’ citizenship claims are achieved by their making duties claims and mixing discourses of social involvement and career. These discursive acts, at times with a collectivist undertone, index a work-ethic ideology related to China’s contemporary neoliberal campaigns, and thus construct a lesbian citizen identity that is highly participatory in work and economically productive. In this way, the participants create and claim a particular lesbian citizenship acceptable and as respectable as, if not more respectable than, heteronormative citizenship. At the same time, the claims of a normative ‘worker citizenship’ suggests a more sociocultural reading of the concept of ‘homonormativity’ (whose default usually centres upon consumption) rather than one all-encompassing notion of homonormativity especially at sites outside the global north.