The Association of “Love”: Tongxingai and Socialism

Principle Investigator：Tsai Meng-Che, IACS, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University

    My short-term project will extend the discussion of my doctoral dissertation to study the discourses of socialism and anarchism during the 1920s and 1930s. In my doctoral dissertation, I analyze and argue that during the 1920s and 1930s the socialists have considered tongxingai and same-sex friendship as a kind of practice of social transformation that leads to a more equal production relations and social relations. My short term research project will analyze to propose that socialism could be a method of creating “love” as well as a process of conceptualizing ethics. Through conducting this project, I intend to present new political and ethical imagination of young intellectuals during the 1920s and 1930s; based on which this association of “love,” rather than an identity-based community, would be possible to promise us a future of equality and liberation.