Utopia, Tongzhi, The Membranes
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
This article explores the intersection of queer utopianism, cyborgian embodiment, and literary critiquein Chi Ta-wei’s The Membranes. Drawing from queer theory, affect studies, and utopian studies, itexamines how the novel engages with speculative futures, gender fluidity, and technological mediation. The text destabilizes convential binaries–body/machine, inside/outside, real/simulated–through the protagonist Momo’s disembodied yet hyper-sensory experience in a cybernetic dystopia. The discussion contextualizes the novel within broader Sinophone queer studies, interrogating the shifting meanings of tongzhi (comrade) and ku’er (queer) in relation to transnational discourses. By critically engaging with Muñoz’s reparative utopianism and Baudrillard’s hyperreality, the article argues that The Membranes stages a paradoxical queer futurity, where identity, embodiment, and reality are perpetually deferred. This reading underscores the novel’s significance in challenging normative epistemologies of gender and sexuality, while exposing the fragility of utopian aspirations in hyperreal landscapes.
Downloads
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
References
Amin, Kadji. Disturbing Attachments: Genet Modern Pederasty, and Queer History. Duke U P, 2017.
——. “Glands, Eugenics, and Rejuvenation in Man into Woman: A Biopolitical
Genealogy of Transsexuality.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 4, 2018, pp. 589-605.
Bao, Hongwei. Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China. NIAS Press, 2018.
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser. The U of Michigan P, 1994.
——. “Violence of the Virtual and Integral Reality.” International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, vol. 2, no. 2, 2005, https://baudrillardstudies.ubishops.ca/ violence-of-the-virtual-and-integral-reality/. Accessed 20 May 2023.
Butler, Judith. “Reflections on Gender Trouble Thirty Years Later: Reply to Hershatter, Loos, and Patel.” The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 79, no. 4, 2020, pp. 969-976.
——. “Gender as Translation: Beyond Monolingualism.” philoSOPHIA, vol. 9, no. 1, 2019, pp. 1-25.
Chiang, Howard. Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific. Columbia University Press, 2021.
Chi, Ta-wei. “Zhanzheng zhongle.” In Mo, 155-178. Linking Publishing, 2011.
——. The Membranes: A Novel. Translated by Ari Larissa Heinrich. Columbia U P, 2021.
——. “Never Prosthetic: An Interview with Chi Ta-wei,” interview by Chris Littlewood, The Paris Review, October 13, 2021, https://www.theparisreview. org/blog/2021/10/13/never-prosthetic-an-interview with-chi-ta-wei/. Accessed 20 May 2023.
Chow, Rey. The Age of the World Target: Self-Referentiality in War, Theory, and Comparative Work. Duke U P, 2006.
Currier, Dianne. “Feminist Technological Futures: Deleuze and Body/Technology Assemblages.” Feminist Theory, vol. 4, no. 3, 2003, pp. 321-338.
Da Silva, Denise Ferreira. Toward a Global Idea of Race. U of Minnesota P, 2007.
Descartes, René. Meditations on First Philosophy: with Selections from the Objections and Replies. Edited and translated by John Cottingham. Cambridge U P, 1996.
Edelman, Lee. Bad Education: Why Queer Theory Teaches Us Nothing. Duke U P, 2022.
Gill-Peterson, Julian. Histories of the Transgender Child. U of Minnesota P, 2018. Hacking, Ian. “Canguilhem amid the Cyborgs.” Economy and Society, vol. 27, no. 2 & 3, 1998, pp. 202-216.
——. “Our Neo-Cartesian Bodies in Parts.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 34, no. 1, 2007, pp. 78-105.
Haraway, Donna J. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” In Manifestly Haraway, 3-90. U of Minnesota P, 2016.
Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. U of Chicago P, 1999.
——. “Unfinished Work: From Cyborg to Cognisphere.” Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 23, no. 7-8, 2006, pp. 159-166.
Heinrich, Ari Larissa. “Promiscuous Literacy: Taipei Punk and the Queer Future of The Membranes.” In The Membranes: A Novel, 137-156. Columbia U P, 2021.
Jameson, Fredric. “Of Islands and Trenches: Neutralization and the Production of Utopian Discourse.” In The Ideologies of Theory, 80-81. Verso, 2008.
——. “The Politics of Utopia.” New Left Review, no. 25, Jan-Feb 2024, pp. 35-54.
Kang, Wenqing. “Seeking Pleasure in Peril: Male Same-Sex Relations during the Cultural Revolution.” positions: asia critique, vol. 30, no. 1, 2022, pp. 61-84.
Lee, Haiyan. The Stranger and the Chinese Moral Imagination. Stanford U P, 2014.
Liu, Lydia. The Freudian Robot: Digital Media and the Future of the Unconscious. U of Chicago P, 2010.
Liu, Petrus. “Why Does Queer Theory Need China?” positions: East Asia Critique, vol. 18, no. 2, 2010, pp. 291-320.
Lukács, György. The Historical Novel. Translated by Hannah and Stanley Mitchell. Merlin Press, 1989.
Maitra, Ani. “Queer Aesthetic Dissonance in Neoliberal Times.” In Identity, Mediation, and the Cunning of Capital, 173-224. Northwestern U P, 2020.
Martin, Fran. Situating Sexualities: Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction, Film and Public Culture. Hong Kong U P, 2003.
——. “Transnational Queer Sinophone Cultures.” In Routledge Handbook of Sexuality Studies in East Asia. Edited by Mark McLelland and Vera Mackie, 35-48. Routledge, 2014.
Muñoz, José Esteban. “Feeling Brown, Feeling Down: Latina Affect, the Performativity of Race, and the Depressive Position.” Signs, vol. 31, no. 3, 2006, pp. 675-688.
——. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York University Press, 2009.
Park, Jane Chi Hyun and Chi Ta-wei. “‘Banal Apocalypse’: An Interview with Author Ta-wei Chi on the New Translation of The Membranes.” Screen Bodies, vol. 5, no. 2, 2020, pp. 63-70.
Puar, Jasbir. “‘I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess’: Becoming-Intersectional in Assemblage Theory.” philoSOPHIA, vol. 2, no.1, 2012, pp. 49-66.
Schueller, Malini Johar. “Analogy and (White) Feminist Theory: Thinking Race and Literature and Modern China 106 the Color of the Cyborg Body.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 30, no. 1, 2005, pp. 63-92.
Scott, Joan. “The Evidence of Experience.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 17, no. 4, 1991, pp. 773-797.
Sedgwick, Eve. “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay Is About You.” In Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity, 123-151. Duke U P, 2003.
Swarbrick, Steven. “The Weather in Sedgwick.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 49, no. 2, 2023, pp. 165-184.
UCLA Center for Chinese Studies. “The Membranes and Queer Literature in Taiwan Featuring Chi Ta-wei and Ari Larissa Heinrich.” YouTube Video. 2:03:10. May 6, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_nm11CBXi0. Accessed 20 May 2023.
Velocci, Beans. “Standards of Care: Uncertainty and Risk in Harry Benjamin’s Transsexual Classifications.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, vol. 8, no. 4, 2021, pp. 462-480.
Wang, David Der-wei. Why Fiction Matters in Contemporary China. Brandeis U P, 2020.
Wu, Yiching. “The Strange Case of China: History, Class, and Chinese Postsocialism.”Boundary 2, vol. 46, no. 2, 2019, pp. 139-162.
Zupančič, Alenka. “Sexual Difference and Ontology.” e-flux journal, no. 32 (February 2012): https://www.e-flux.com/journal/32/68246/sexual-difference- and-ontology/. Accessed 20 May 2023.