Media, erotics, and transnational asia Media, erotics, and transnational asia Purnima mankekar and Louisa schein, eds. Duke University Press Durham and London 2012 © 2012 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ♾ Typeset in Warnock Pro by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. Chapter 3 originally appeared as “Zines and Zones of Desire: Mass- Mediated Love, National Romance, and Sexual Citizenship in Gay Indonesia,” by Tom Boellstorff, Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 63, Issue 2 (May 2004), 367–402. Copyright © 2004 Association for Asian Studies. Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press. Chapter 6 originally appeared as “Dangerous Desires: Television and Erotics in Late Twentieth-Century India,” by Purnima Mankekar, Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 63, Issue 2 (May 2004), 403–31. Copyright © 2004 Association for Asian Studies. Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press. Chapter 7 originally appeared as “Homeland Beauty: Transnational Longing and Hmong American Video,” by Louisa Schein, Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 63, Issue 2 (May 2004), 433–63. Copyright © 2004 Association for Asian Studies. Re- printed with the permission of Cambridge University Press. PUrnima mankekar dedicates this book to her brother ajit mankekar (1955–2003) for raging against the dying of the light. LoUisa schein remembers with this book her grad school theory brother, mark saroyan (1960–1994): Your brilliance and your early loss to aids pushed me to go deep into sexuality studies. contents ix acknowledgments 1 introduction mediations and Transmediations: erotics, sociality, and “asia” Purnima mankekar and Louisa schein 33 chapter 1 Wayward erotics: mediating Queer Diasporic return martin F. manaLansan iV 53 chapter 2 For Your reading Pleasure: self- health (Ziwo Baojian) information in Beijing in the 1990s Judith Farquhar 75 chapter 3 Zines and Zones of Desire: mass- mediated Love, national romance, and sexual citizenship in Gay indonesia tom BoeLLstorFF 111 chapter 4 correspondence marriages, imagined Virtual communities, and countererotics on the internet nicoLe constaBLe 139 chapter 5 Flows between the media and the clinic: Desiring Production and social Production in Urban Beijing eVerett Yuehong Zhang 173 chapter 6 Dangerous Desires: erotics, Public culture, and identity in Late Twentieth- century india Purnima mankekar 203 chapter 7 homeland Beauty: Transnational Longing and hmong american Video Louisa schein 233 chapter 8 another kind of Love? Debating homosexuality and same- sex intimacy through Taiwanese and chinese Film reception sara L. Friedman 267 chapter 9 Born under Western eyes: The Politics and erotics of the Documentary Gaze in Born into Brothels heather deLL 297 chapter 10 american Geishas and oriental/ist Fantasies anne aLLison 323 references 357 contributors 359 index acknowledgMents As academic projects transform into collective endeavors, they become truly pleasurable and rewarding. Over the years that it has taken to bring this project to fruition, many colleagues, friends, and family members have generously contributed guidance, provocations, and support. Our earliest musings on erotics, media, and Asia emerged from numerous meals at con- ferences from which developed a close friendship coupled with intensely generative intellectual synergy that gave rise to this work. At the same time, our commitments emerged from the urgency of the aids crisis, which has called so many of us to take action around the complex, uneven interplay of meanings and practices inherent in sexualities and erotics. We first began presenting pieces of the collection at the Association for Asian Studies annual meetings in 2000, where we benefited from astute comments from Paroma Roy and several members of the audience. Celine Parreñas Shimizu and Ralph Litzinger enriched our thinking by contribut- ing their own work on erotics and media at that venue. Louisa Schein and Purnima Mankekar presented essays at the Crossroads in Cultural Studies conference in Birmingham, U.K., in 2000. We are grateful to members of that audience for their questions and feedback. Anne Allison and Lawrence Cohen provided stimulating critique at a panel we organized at the Ameri- can Anthropological Association meetings in 2000. Earlier versions of the chapters by Boellstorff, Mankekar, and Schein were published in the Journal of Asian Studies (2004, volume 6, number 3), where we benefited from sug- gestions from editor Ann Waltner and the anonymous peer reviewers for the journal. Our editor at Duke University Press, Ken Wissoker, has epitomized patience, enthusiasm, and good humor throughout the process of preparing the manuscript for publication. We cannot thank him enough for his sup- port and guidance. Several anonymous reviewers worked hard on the in- tegrity of the volume, sometimes even reviewing more than once. At Duke University Press, the manuscript was shepherded through the production process by Anitra Grisales, Courtney Berger, Mandy Earley, Jade Brooks, and Liz Smith. We are grateful to them for their assistance and diligence. Finally, we thank Scott Smiley for accommodating our schedule to do the index for this book. Purnima Mankekar would like to acknowledge the hard work of Rozita Dimova (Stanford University) and Preeti Sharma (ucLa). Their close read- ings, bibliographic help, and assistance with literature reviews have been indispensable. Louisa Schein thanks Shin Lee, Ying-Chao Kao, and Shanthi Shanduga for their assistance with research and bibliographic editing. Dil- lon Mahoney provided invaluable bibliographic and technical input in the final stages. Several of our students have provided astute commentary, gen- erous critique, and warm intellectual camaraderie over the years. Purnima Mankekar wishes to thank students in her Anthropological Approaches to Sexuality graduate seminar (co- taught with Barbara Voss) at Stanford Uni- versity for their comments and close readings of the introduction and her essay. Louisa Schein is much indebted to the wide-ranging provocation of dozens of undergraduates in her Critical Sexualities classes over the years. Colleagues at Rutgers and Stanford as well as several of our contributors offered rigorous readings and critique of the introduction. Louisa Schein thanks Carlos Decena and Parvis Ghassem- Fachandi, and Purnima Manke- kar is grateful to Barb Voss, Sylvia Yanagisako, and Akhil Gupta. Outside Stanford, Anjali Arondekar has been a wonderful interlocutor and provided invaluable suggestions as we revised our introduction. Purnima Mankekar would also like to express her appreciation of the wonderful intellectual and political community provided by the South Asia Reading Group in the San Francisco Bay Area, which, over the years, consisted of Anjali Arondekar, Paola Bacchetta, Aditya Behl, Lawrence Cohn, Vasudha Dalmia, Inderpal Grewal, Akhil Gupta, Saba Mahmood, Raka Ray, and Parama Roy. Purnima Mankekar is particularly grateful to friends and colleagues who have made her transition from Stanford University to ucLa so seamless and pleasurable, especially Anurima Banerji, Ali Behdad, Lucy Burns, Grace Hong, Keith Camacho, Beth Marchant, Saloni Mathur, Kathleen McHugh, Aamir Mufti, Dan Neuman, Arundhati Neuman, Chon Noriega, Sherry Ortner, Aparna Sharma, Monica Smith, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Tim Taylor, x acknoWLeDGmenTs and Juliet Williams. She wishes to thank the chairs of her two departments, Chris Littleton, Cindy Fan, Lane Hirabayashi, Beth Marchant, Jinqi Ling, and Jenny Sharpe, for their unwavering support. Students at ucLa, chiefly, Amanda Apgar, Chloe Coventry, Devaka Gunawardena, Veena Hampapur, Brian Hu, Naveen Minai, Stephanie Santos, Preeti Sharma, and Mihiri Til- lakaratne, have all been a pleasure to work with and have pushed her to clar- ify her intellectual arguments in productive ways. She acknowledges with gratitude and affection the ever- wonderful South Asian/American Studies Reading Group consisting of some of the students mentioned above as well as Diya Bose, Camille Frazier, and Gina Singh for being her reading com- panions. And she can never thank enough her writing companions, Jessica Cattelino, Lieba Faier, Hannah Landecker, Abigail Saguy, and Juliet Williams for their warm support and rigorous feedback through all her writing en- deavors. Last but not least, the staff in her two departments, Stacey Hirose, Samantha Hogan, Richard Medrano, Jenna Miller Von- Ah, and Jessie Singh, have always been incredibly supportive and have helped her life at ucLa run smoothly. We are deeply grateful to our authors for their incredible endurance, positive energy, hard work, and intellectual generosity, and would like to note, with particular appreciation, the close readings and feedback provided by Anne Allison, Tom Boellstorff, and Martin Manalansan on the introduc- tion. We would also like to thank Celine Parreñas Shimizu for her intellec- tual inputs and contagious enthusiasm in the early stages of the preparation of this volume, and express regret that her chapter could not be included in the final manuscript. Mark Liechty and Ralph Litzinger were fellow travelers at the initial stages in the project. Our volume is poorer for our inability to include their contributions. Our families have provided invaluable support. Purnima Mankekar wishes to express her appreciation to Akhil Gupta and Kamla Mankekar for their