Heterotopia vs. Panopticon: Campus Memory, Identity, and the Emerging of Lesbian Subjectivities in Taiwan
| Autor: | Chang, Chiao-ting, 張喬婷 |
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| Rok vydání: | 1999 |
| Druh dokumentu: | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Popis: | 87 Since the 1990’s, lesbian movement has been grown up associatedly and deeply with feminist movement in Taiwan. Until 1995, the first established lesbian community emerged as a student group with the title of “λLambda”, and registered publicly and legally in National Taiwan University (NTU). Since then, Lesbian community began to create their political space in a collective form and start her coming out movement with another gay student group, titled as “Gay Chat”, on campus. Within the specific context of 90’s Taiwan, my thesis is trying to take a record of their memories and stories, including the coming-out experiences of lesbian students on campus, the process of lesbian community-building and the emergence of lesbian subject/subjectivities. First of all, my research begins with the critical reading of the social spaces of the girl high school and the university by way of personal interviews of some lesbian students, mainly the members of “λLambda” in NTU. I found that most of my interviewees traced back their memory and experience of homosexual relationship, they always mention their experiences at girl high school days. (The main example I refer to in my thesis is “Taipei Municipal First Girls'' Senior High School”). According to their memories and experiences, the same-sexed environment actually is one of the spaces for nurturing their same-sex intimate relationship and network that further forms the base for their lesbian identities. With the stigmatized definition of “lesbian” as kind of “situational homosexuality”, “pseudo-homosexuality”, or “sexuality-as-transitional”, the educational authority at girl high try purposely to repress young women’s homosexuality. Applying the idea of “panopticon” of Jeremy Bentham, it is realized that the dominant ideology of heterosexualism actually has been obviously involved in all the disciplines and controls of their bodies and minds, especially for those elitists with more cultural capital. My main argument therefore is that such discourses of compulsory heterosexuality successfully transformed other kinds of sexuality, such as lesbian desires, and with the spatial strategy of “panopticon” by way of pronouncing their sexuality are “situational”, “pseudo” or “transitional”. The authority on campus actually plays the important role to define which is correct and normal. Furthermore, by way of marginalizing, young lesbians and gays have been watched in the heterosexual public space and repressed as private and personal. With the enlightening of the idea of “heterotopia” from M. Foucault, however, such severe control is also porous. Though such intimacy relationship between women is invisible publicly, it did exist privately. Furthermore, as I researched, those young qunzi-lesbians have begun to actively mobilize and voice themselves with collective action after they became University students. It’s realized that lesbian identity and subject/subjectivities, as political one can’t be visible until those collective movements emerged on University campus. My conclusion ends at some points of young lesbian’s strategies for resistance. First, heterotopia in girl’s high school actually is the space for nurturing lesbian’s sexuality while “sisterhood” as excuse for nurturing intimate relationship among women. Secondly, the developments of feminist discourse, anti-heterosexual discourses, and radical cultural movements provided by the metropolitan environment, such as Taipei city, fruitfully helps to formulate lesbian networks, communities and political identities. We will see how those lesbian pioneers potentially start the alternative urban social movements in the future. |
| Databáze: | Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations |
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