School of Sociology and Social Policy Boys’ Love, Byte-sized: A Qualitative Exploration of Queer- themed Microfiction in Chinese Cyberspace Gareth Shaw B.A. (Hons), M.A. Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January 2017 Acknowledgements I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my supervisors, Dr Xiaoling Zhang, Professor Andrew Kam-Tuck Yip, and Dr Jeremy Taylor, for their constant support and faith in my research. This project would not have been possible without them. I also wish to convey my sincerest thanks to my examiners, Professor Sally Munt and Dr Sarah Dauncey, for their very insightful comments and suggestions, which have been invaluable to this project’s completion. I am grateful to the Economic and Social Research Council for funding this research (Award number: 1228555). I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to everyone who has participated in this project, particularly to the interview respondents, who gave so freely of their time. I am especially thankful to Huang Guan, Zhai Shunyi and Wei Ye for assisting me with some of the (often quite esoteric) Chinese to English translations. To my family, friends and colleagues, I thank you for being a constant source of comfort and advice when the light at the end of the tunnel seemed to have vanished. Special thanks go to Laura and Céline, for their support and encouragement during the long writing hours. Finally, to Juan and Mani, whose love and support means the world to me, I am eternally grateful to have had you both by my side on this journey. i Abstract This project undertakes an in-depth, qualitative investigation into queer- themed ‘Boys Love’ microfiction within the realm of Chinese cyberspace, with the aim of further understanding both the features of the genre and the motivation for production and consumption among its primarily heterosexual female user-base. Expanding upon previous studies, which have focused primarily on investigation into the consumer groups of such fiction, this project seeks to establish links between the linguistic/discursive features of queer Chinese-language microfiction and observable social phenomena or cultural frameworks. Using and developing Gee’s tools of inquiry (2014) for textual analysis, this project explores the situated meanings, figured worlds and Discourses embodied in very short fictional stories representing male same-sex intimacies and queer sexualities. In doing so, I proposes a development of Johnson’s circuits of culture model (1986), in which I hypothesize that, confronted with heteronormative social structures—constructed along a gender binary and framed through patriarchal familial and social relationships—China’s cyberspace has offered a new platform for marginalized individuals (both queer-identified and those heterosexual consumers who enjoy fantasizing about same-sex intimacies) to engage, navigate and negotiate space to tell their stories. In doing so, they find opportunities to renegotiate citizenship based on sexual identity. Therefore, this study creates a ‘circuit of queer cyberculture’ framework through which to analyse queer-themed microfiction. This framework proposes that, through an emerging form of ‘cultural self-determination’ rooted in sexual and gender identity and the declaration and negotiation of sexual citizenship, netizens who experience social marginalization in the real world through their attraction to representation of queer lives begin to indigenize circuits of popular culture observable in mainstream media platforms by creating and distributing their own works of art and fiction online. ii Through a combination of Critical Discourse Analysis of 40 selected works of microfiction and applied thematic analysis of 39 interviews conducted with producers and consumers of the genre in Mainland China, this project therefore assesses the development of the Boys’ Love genre into a microfiction format, distributed via a publicly visible online platform. Investigation of the defining characteristics of the genre, in combination with data gathered from interviews, allows this project to demonstrate how this new empirical data can expand our global and local knowledge of theoretical and conceptual debates regarding identity, gender, representation, queer sexualities, sexual citizenship and circuits of culture. iii Table of Contents 1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Project rationale and research questions ................................................................... 5 1.2 Background and context: review of descriptive and empirical literature .................... 8 1.2.1 Internet in China ................................................................................................... 9 1.2.1.1 Demographics .................................................................................................. 10 1.2.1.2 Regulations and legal framework ........................................................................ 11 1.2.2 Social networking sites (SNSs) ............................................................................... 14 1.2.2.1 Microblogging: a ‘byte-size’ communication revolution .......................................... 15 1.2.3 Microfiction .......................................................................................................... 16 1.2.3.1 Rising popularity of Chinese online micronovels .................................................... 17 1.2.4 Boys’ Love as a literary genre ................................................................................. 20 1.2.4.1 Fujoshi/funü: female fans of BL fiction ................................................................. 22 1.2.4.2 Conflating genres: the BL spectrum in China ........................................................ 22 1.3 Thesis outline and overview .................................................................................... 24 2 Theoretical Frameworks ................................................................................................. 27 2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 27 2.2 Sexuality .................................................................................................................. 28 2.2.1 Cultural construction of sexuality and gender ........................................................... 31 2.3 Geography of sexuality ............................................................................................ 33 2.3.1 Online spaces and sexuality ................................................................................... 35 2.4 Heteronormativity and patriarchy ............................................................................ 37 2.4.1 Embodiment ......................................................................................................... 38 2.4.2 Regulation and legislation of sexuality ..................................................................... 40 2.4.3 Heteronormativity in cyberspace ............................................................................. 41 2.5 Citizenship ............................................................................................................... 42 2.5.1 Sexual and intimate citizenship ............................................................................... 44 2.6 Cultural Studies approaches .................................................................................... 49 2.6.1 Encoding and decoding meaning: communication in the digital age ............................. 50 2.6.2 Remediation of identity and the plasticity of popular culture ....................................... 53 2.6.2.1 Play and playfulness .......................................................................................... 54 2.6.2.2 Plasticity .......................................................................................................... 56 2.6.3 Youth culture ........................................................................................................ 57 2.6.4 Circuits of culture .................................................................................................. 59 2.6.5 ‘Circuits of queer cyberculture’ in China ................................................................... 61 2.7 Summary: theoretical frameworks ........................................................................... 62 3 Methodological Approach ................................................................................................ 64 3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 64 iv 3.2 Data sources, collection and analysis ....................................................................... 65 3.2.1 Queer-themed micronovels .................................................................................... 65 3.2.2 Consumer/producer/prosumer interviews and responses............................................ 67 3.2.2.1 Respondent demographics and Profiles ................................................................ 70 3.3 Textual analysis ....................................................................................................... 73 3.3.1 Discourse analysis ................................................................................................. 76 3.3.1.1 Differences between DA and