Performing Manchyna: Unmapping Promissory Exaltation, Multicultural
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Performing ManChyna: Unmapping Promissory Exaltation, Multicultural Eugenics, and the New Whiteness (Or, “Call Me Dr. ManChyna”) By Andrew Wei Ling (A.W.) William Lee A thesis submitted to the Graduate Program in Cultural Studies in conformity with the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada September, 2015 Copyright © Andrew Wei Ling William Lee, 2015 Abstract Creating art and performing as ManChyna collectively function as my entry into an autoethnographic mapping of mobility and space within liberal multiculturalism. I introduce the research creative method of autoethnographic creatography, because creation and performance are my interventions into and tools for analyzing social space. My parody of queer Asian racialization upends liberal multiculturalism’s promise of incorporation, or promissory exaltation (invoking Sunera Thobani’s, “racial exaltation”), which instrumentally disciplines and includes putative model minorities and homonorms alike. Thus, assimilation into a queer liberal multiculturalism is my primary theoretical target. Building on José Muñoz’s idea of disidentification, I introduce the notion of disassimilation as a performative embodiment of critical analysis and theory. How can individuals articulate the current contours of liberal ideology? How can one counter an ever-shifting dominant culture from a ‘minor’ point of view when one crucial aim of the latter’s evasive energy is the incorporation of that minor gaze? And how does the minoritarian subject represent her critical navigation of majority codes when the picture is complicated by her desire to assimilate into them? The theories of disidentification and disassimilation extend to my uprooting of rural space as supposedly settler land. Using my excessive queer Asianness, I dance on the supposed whiteness of rural Canada, mocking it, and connecting my limited incorporation into queer liberal multiculturalism with ongoing histories of racial exploitation and Indigenous erasure; ultimately, the aim is recognition of rightful Indigenous belonging, existence, and authority of the land. Creatography leads me, via ManChyna’s performance, to encounter intimate modes of racial and sexual discipline within the promises of assimilation and exaltation. ManChyna’s non-Black deployment of rap and humour connects my project to cross-racial political consciousness and alliance. ManChyna serves as a ii confluence of cultural pathologies, connecting maligned and (paradoxically) celebrated Asian and Black motherhoods with queer deviance. While the dichotomous construction of model and not-so-model minorities work to reiterate the instrumental opposition of minorities against each other, ManChyna’s creations and performances dialogue with other cultural texts that emerge as contradictory navigations of the inherently paradoxical “new whiteness” of queer settler multiculturalism; together, we map its evasive contours. iii Acknowledgements First, I thank my supervisors, Kip Pegley and Scott Morgensen, for their immeasurable support. Their intellectual guidance and encouragement were fundamental in nourishing and developing my inchoate ideas into a fully realized final draft. I could not have completed this journey without your kind words and stimulating discussion. I also cannot express deeply enough my appreciation for my committee’s generosity of time and spirit. Thank you Gary Gibbins for being there to welcome me into Cultural Studies and see me through to completion. To Dia Da Costa, thank you so much for the kind and encouraging feedback on my proposal. And I am very grateful to Dylan Robinson, Keren Zaiontz, and Charity Marsh for your participation, support, and insightful feedback. Second, ManChyna could not exist without my extensive family of fellow artists and creative friends whose encouragement and collaborations make up the foundation of my art. To Lauren Hortie, with your tireless commitment to bringing Shawville country life to the queer city, I thank you for nurturing the wacky GMO seeds of ManChyna from corn-gobbler to international rapper. To Amanda Balsys, Alex Da Costa, and Matt Rogalsky, your talents on the mic and behind the controls make ManChyna sound so good; also, PuTang, you’re a monster on stage. To Sonya Reynolds and Arnaud Baudry, your videos of ManChyna have been indispensable in shaping my vision with your hours of editing and filming; thank you for being ManChyna’s second eyes and ears. To Greg Wong, my twinsie, thank you for the pasties, your photography skills, and the frequent use of your place; you are the lynchpin of not just ManChyna, but also countless artists in our community. Also to our BoylesqueTO family, for the better part of a decade, I could not have asked for a better, more professional, and hard-working bunch of weirdoes than you. Linda Gallant and Mike LeSage have the voices of angels, filthy filthy angels iv – performing with you is indescribably fun. To my roommates, Stephen Guy and Paul Saulnier, remember when you, respectively, encouraged me to start a PhD in ManChyna and get on a plane to tour China? Me neither. And to Karl Hardy, thank you so much for all the chats in the office and running around Kingston for me when I couldn’t be there. You are the best. For my family, thank you for the continued support, feeding me life-sustaining dim sum, and always keeping me on my toes. And finally, to my partner Scott Schieman, I thank you for everything – for being a source of inspiration and encouragement so that I could finish this journey, even when I thought I couldn’t. This is for you and Griffin. v Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ iv Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... vi List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... vii Chapter 1 Introducing ManChyna .................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 2 Theory and Method ...................................................................................................... 24 Chapter 3 Chinese Brokeback: Unsettling White Eugenic Rurality ........................................... 133 Chapter 4 Promissory Exaltation ................................................................................................ 197 Chapter 5 The Hybrid Vigour of Tiger Mom ............................................................................. 251 Epilogue ...................................................................................................................................... 356 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 359 Appendix A. Excerpt of conversation between A.W. Lee (ManChyna) and Greg Wong (Wrong Note Rusty) ..................................................................................................................... 376 Appendix B. Text of Alexandra Wallace, a former UCLA undergraduate, complaining about Asians in the UCLA library ............................................................................................ 384 Appendix C. Original lyrics of “Wavin Flag” by K’naan, followed by the modified lyrics of “Wavin Flag (Coca-Cola Celebration Remix).” ............................................................. 385 vi List of Figures Figure 1. Screen capture of Himanshu Suri's tweet regarding ManChyna. “peace to my tourmate in china @manchyna. DO I CALL THIS GAY CHINESE CANADIAN RAP?” December 6, 2012. ..................................................................................................................................... 4 Figure 2. 1879 Cover of Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization .................................................. 32 Figure 3. Allegiance to the Fag (2012) mixtape cover art, illustration by Lauren Hortie. ...... 59 Figure 4. Relationship between disidentificatory and disassimilatory lenses of analysis. .... 62 Figure 5. Side by side comparison of Wrong Note Rusty (Left) and ManChyna (Right) ...... 103 Figure 6. Screen capture of www.outragedc.com ................................................................................. 134 Figure 7. A.W. Lee performing the original burlesque scene, “Brokeback That Ass Up” under the name “Male Gayze” at Steers and Queers, Toronto, 2007 ........................................... 136 Figure 8. YouTube comment left on ManChyna’s video for “Brokeback That Ass Up.” ........ 137 Figure 9. Screen cap of “Brokeback That Ass Up” (2012) ................................................................. 140 Figure 10. Victoria Peak, Alberta, Canada, in “Expedition Series,” by Tseng Kwong Chi, 1986. ...................................................................................................................................................................... 141 Figure 11. Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, Tseng Kwong Chi, 1986 ........................................... 145 Figure 12. Various screen caps from “Brokeback That Ass Up” (2012). .................................... 147 Figure