The Production of Gender/Sexual Discourses and The Fantasy of Theory: On the Case of Boys' Love Studies

Principle Investigator：Jui-an CHOU, Postdoctoral Researcher, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University

This project focuses on the recent rise of "Boys' Love Studies" as a research topic and examines the production of academic discourses around an East-Asian subculture. By placing the English-language studies of BL back into the context of Western gender/sexuality studies and queer theory, I contend that these discourses are often aligned with a fixed set of "fantasies" about radical politics and political subjectivity. Using discourses around BL in Japan and among the subculture's participants as a counterpoint, this project reimagines a way to theorize cross-gender homoerotic writing through fantasy, rather than through identity and radical politics.