Copyright by Alexander Cho 2015 The Dissertation Committee for Alexander Cho Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Sensuous Participation: Queer Youth of Color, Affect, and Social Media Committee: Shanti Kumar, Supervisor Neville Hoad Madhavi Mallapragada Kathleen Stewart Samuel C. Watkins Sensuous Participation: Queer Youth of Color, Affect, and Social Media by Alexander Cho, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2015 Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my family: my mom Janice, my dad Paul (Yonghwan), my sister Crystina, and my brother Michael. For so many reasons, including fostering a sense of intellectual curiosity and alternative thinking from the beginning: using those ―teach your baby to read‖ cards, being unafraid to let your kids pursue their artsy interests, being the original foodies, being matter-of-fact in matters of the world, for getting me through the last few months back in LA with home-cooked meals, tales from the circulation desk, and countless games of Magic: The Gathering. I love you. Acknowledgements It really does take a village. As I look back, I realize that this dissertation is the result of years of gradual accumulation of support, knowledge, and inspiration from so many places. I first need to thank my supervisor, Dr. Shanti Kumar, for his brilliance, intellectual guidance and rapport, and simply getting it from the beginning. So many times I‘d be hedging on something and Shanti would read it, identify what I thought was my most outlandish claim, and exclaim, ―This is what you want to say!‖ That belief in what I was trying to accomplish without me even knowing it made this dissertation conceivable. I have the good fortune of being at the University of Texas and being able to assemble what I think is an ideal committee. Madhavi Mallapragada‘s ability to be razor- sharp in identifying what works and what doesn‘t (and continuous support) as well as guiding my Master‘s thesis so expertly; Craig Watkins for the countless hours of intellectual camaraderie, research opportunity, and zeal for big thinking while at the same time keeping everything grounded and applicable; Neville Hoad for knowing what I want to say before I even open my mouth and already having a joke about it and being able to slay entire wrong directions with a single turn of phrase; and Katie Stewart for championing the act of writing as full of transcendent possibility and opening my eyes to a realm of literature that spoke to me when I was searching for something to hold on to— I‘ve been around the academic circuit over my years as a student and I fully believe that I couldn‘t have asked for a better group of thinkers to guide this project. Of course, there are my friends, so many along the way, so generous and selfless and kind: Laura Dixon, Peter Hamilton, Tom Lindsay, Jessalynn Keller, Candice Haddad, v Catherine Bracy, Andres Lombana Bermudez, Stephanie Rosen, Lokeilani Kaimana, Pearl Brilmeyer, Vivian Shaw, Ricky Hill, the Rio House posse, and many more whom I‘m sure I‘m forgetting right now. Kareem Khubchandani provided crucial inspiration in the final year of writing. There is the pre-grad-school crew, who always reminded me of the open possibility of the world when I was trapped in my head and who always had a flute of champagne ready for me whenever I saw them: Todd Gonzales, Robbie Daw, Jim Mitchell, Mark Stoner, Sadia Harper, Tim Taylor, Jeff Mahacek, Meghan Tadel, Gabriel Chu. Perhaps my biggest source of support has been my constant companion, Nick Harkins, for most of this whole process—either in person over good Chinese food or on the phone putting up with me while I was stuck in traffic on the 405. There are many who contributed to my sense of belonging and support at UT, and who simply believed in me, which is vitally important: Joe Straubhaar, Madeline Hsu, Sharmila Rudrappa, Sona Shah, Mary Kearney, Char Burke, Ann Cvetkovich. Outside of UT, Ken Hillis was a master editor, and the MacArthur Connected Learning Research Network was a breath of fresh air. Thanks to everyone who helped me through. vi Sensuous Participation: Queer Youth of Color, Affect, and Social Media Alexander Cho, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2015 Supervisor: Shanti Kumar This dissertation presents the findings of a long-term, qualitative, ethnographic study of the ways queer youth of color use the social media platform Tumblr.com. It synthesizes the author‘s own immersive experiences as an active participant-observer in queer of color networks on Tumblr.com for over five years with semi-structured qualitative interviews conducted with users online as well as offline interviews with queer youth of color Tumblr users in the Austin area. Existing at the nexus of critical race studies, queer studies, affect theory, and Internet studies, Sensuous Participation reinterprets the concept of ―participatory cultures‖ to account for the affective motivations for participation in online networks. It asserts that our current understanding of the affective motivations that drive people to participate in online participatory cultures is thin and looks to the practices of queer youth of color, who have developed robust ways of expressing feelings that challenge systemic racism and heteronormative cultural forms, as evidence of the passions that drive participation. Ultimately, borrowing the idea of ―the sensuous‖ from film theorist Laura U. Marks, it argues that social media networked publics such as Tumblr.com must be understood as networks of passion, and it asserts that the cultivation of collective passion in this way has the potential to transit static categories of identity politics. vii Table of Contents List of Figures ..........................................................................................................x Introduction ..............................................................................................................1 Prologue ..........................................................................................................1 Making Senses ................................................................................................2 What is Tumblr? .............................................................................................5 Review of Literatures ....................................................................................10 The Shape of the Study .................................................................................14 Layout of the Dissertation .............................................................................18 Interlude ........................................................................................................22 Chapter 1: Social Media, Participatory Cultures, and Affective Labor .................24 What are Social Media? ................................................................................25 How Tumblr Fits—And Doesn‘t ..................................................................28 Tumblr History..............................................................................................30 Tumblr, Advertising, and Engagement .........................................................33 Social Media and the Logic of Economic Production ..................................42 Affective Labor .............................................................................................49 Where Now? .................................................................................................56 Interlude ........................................................................................................58 Chapter 2: Queer Reverb: Tumblr, Affect, Time ...................................................60 ―Terrain vague‖ .............................................................................................62 Lay of the Land – Types of LGBTQ Tumblrs ..............................................69 The Shape of Affect ......................................................................................72 Affect‘s Blueprint .........................................................................................74 Queer Analytics ............................................................................................82 Archive and the Recollection-Image ............................................................84 Queer Reverb ................................................................................................89 Interlude ........................................................................................................95 viii Chapter 3: Attunement and Passion .......................................................................97 The Problem of Passion ..............................................................................100 Fostering Attunement..................................................................................103 Conceal/Reveal ...........................................................................................106 Dealing With Bad Feelings .........................................................................110 Affirmation .................................................................................................122 Sensuous Participation and Networked Publics ..........................................132 Interlude ......................................................................................................137