‘We Are Here’: the politics of memory in narrating China’s queer feminist history

Hongwei Bao

doi:10.1080/10304312.2020.1785079

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the politics of narrating feminist and queer histories in contemporary China. Focusing on Zhao Jing and Shi Tou’s 2015 film, We Are Here, a documentary made to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women, I examine how the film represents queer women’s history in China and in what discourses such a representation is situated. Icontend that the processes of remembrance and forgetting are intertwined in narrating queer women’s history in China. Indeed, while the film successfully recovers a hidden queer history, it also risks erasing the history of socialist and Marxist feminism, as well as China’s socialist legacies at large. Isuggest that we should think about Chinese feminist and queer movements in terms of continuities and ruptures by paying attention to their articulations to different transnational discourses at specific historical conjunctures. While We Are Here convincingly addresses the transnational influence from liberal feminism, it is also necessary to call attention to the legacies of socialist and Marxist feminism in China and transnationally in contemporary feminist and queer historiography and mediated memories.

Highlights

In Zhao Jing and Shi Tou’s 2015 film, We Are Here (Figure 1), a documentary film about the history of lesbian activism in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), many interviewees, most of whom are China-based feminist and queer activists, trace the history of China’s queer activism and feminist activism to the Fourth United NationsWorld Conference on Women (UNWCW).1 They point out how the ideas and practices that they had learned from their international counterparts at the conference informed the feminist and queer activism in which they subsequently engaged.2 Such an undertone is evident from the narrative structure of the film
The 58-minute-long documentary is divided into two parts: the first half of the film reconstructs the history and memory of the Fourth United NationsWorld Conference on Women (UNWCW) through assembling together old photographs, historical footages and video interviews with those who experienced the event, with an emphasis on lesbian experiences at the conference; the second half of the film documents the history of queer activism from 1995 to 2015.3 The message seems clear: the 1995 UN conference marked a milestone in international women’s history but in China’s queer history as well
If such a universalism had successfully brought together women from different parts of the world at the Fourth UNWCW in 1995, what was missing in the film, together with other documented memories of the event, was unequal power relations between the West and non-West, between Chinese feminism and Western feminism, as well as between different strands of feminist ideas and practices, each with their own ideological baggage and political imaginary

Summary

Introduction

In Zhao Jing and Shi Tou’s 2015 film, We Are Here (Figure 1), a documentary film about the history of lesbian activism in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), many interviewees, most of whom are China-based feminist and queer activists, trace the history of China’s queer activism and feminist activism to the Fourth United Nations. As we celebrate the introduction of a particular strand of Western feminism, liberal feminism in particular, to China, it is necessary to reflect critically on what has been lost in the process and whether other strands of feminism (including Marxist and socialist feminism) have been given sufficient attention It was the ACWF, together with many individuals and organisations who dedicated themselves to gender and sexual equalities that paved the way for the burgeoning feminist and queer activism before and after 1995. Engebretsen (2014, 126, original emphasis) argues that this approach departs from a ‘Western-originating politics of public visibility’ often characterising activist work carried out by government organisations and NGOs. In her seminal study of lala/lesbian activism in the PRC, Elisabeth Engebretsen insightfully suggests that queer feminist activism should be best understood as ‘a practice-oriented politics of community, where the primary strategy is to establish a collective consciousness within queer communities, raise general awareness, and consolidate popular support and mainstream acceptance’ (2014, 126, original emphasis). I would caution against such a simplistic reading by reflecting upon how such a discourse has emerged in the postsocialist context

Feminist and queer liberalism

Conclusion