File(s) under permanent embargo
'The Rice Steamer': Race, desire and affect in Sydney's gay scene
While for some Sydney's gay scene is a space of sexual liberation, for Asian-Australians it's also a space of racial segregation. Drawing on ethnographic research in gay venues in Sydney and employing Deleuze and Guattari's notions of ‘striated space’ and ‘territorialisation’, this paper explores the ways that racialised sexual desires constitute spatial formations and practices that literally confine gay Asian males into ghettos within gay space. The second part of this paper asks what processes of deterritorialisation are at play in gay spaces that might enable possibilities of connecting bodies not reducible to race. Using an autoethnographic and performative mode of address, I draw on a sexual encounter in a gay dance party in order to chart a set of affective connections, which, while not demolishing race, is nevertheless irreducible to it. In doing so I put forward a model of desire that forces us to rethink what queer space might look like.
History
Journal
Australian GeographerVolume
39Issue
3 - GEOGRAPHIES OF SEXUALITY AND GENDER 'DOWN UNDER'Pagination
283 - 292Publisher
RoutledgeLocation
Melbourne, Vic.Publisher DOI
ISSN
0004-9182eISSN
1465-3311Language
engPublication classification
C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journalCopyright notice
2008, Geographical Society of New South WalesUsage metrics
Categories
No categories selectedLicence
Exports
RefWorks
BibTeX
Ref. manager
Endnote
DataCite
NLM
DC