dc.description.abstract | In this thesis I aim to explore the double effects of individualization exerting on homosexuals at hot springs in Taiwan, and thereby to unveil the counter agency of the ambiguous and secret homosexual performance against the heteronormative regulation.
In the process of individualization, homosexuals, like other individuals, are cultivated to become self-concerned citizens, and are encouraged to fulfill their desires through consumption. Such a self-concerned pursuit is regulated by the state and the market in order to construct individuals to be docile and useful subjects for the heteronormative institutions’ benefits. The termination of sex workers’ official license at Peitou in 1979 designates that the eradication of “non-normative” sexuality out of hot spring industry has become the heteronormative institutions’ principle of reconstructing hot spring as a healthful, natural, and de-sexualized leisure model/commodity. Nevertheless, the implementation of de-sexualization fails to eliminate homosexual performance at hot springs. In the same process of individualization, homosexuals are indeed on the one hand cultivated as compliant subjects to conform to the heteronormative ideology of intimacy, whereas on the other hand, they are individualized, like other consumers, to know their own need, pursue their own need, and fulfill their own need actively at hot springs.
With the cover of hot spring customs and spatial elements, such as opposite sexes bathing separately, same-sex bathing naked together, opaque hot spring water, small pools, secluded corners and the darkness of the night, homosexuals fulfill their sex/erotic/communal longing through the prudent practice of ambiguous eye contact and secret body touch. In hot spring space, homosexuals learn and practice skills of non-verbal sexual adventure under the surveillance of heteronormative institutions, and develop a neo-body-space concept to counter the heteronormative ideology of intimacy. Homosexuals’ strategies of dealing with the heteronormative regulation may be rather low-toned and compliant, whereas in practicing ambiguous and secret homosexual acts, the counter agency is generated for them to expand homosexual territories, to cross the boundary of “public” and “private,” to create/preserve homosexual hot spring culture and thus to affirm their distinct sexuality in the heteronormative milieu.
The interacting and conflicting matrix of the powers of the state and the market, hot spring, homosexuals and their sex/erotic/communal acts will be explored in four ways. First, I conduct interview with homosexuals who have hot spring experience in order to bring into light the strategies taken by homosexuals in fulfilling their physical as well as mental needs and the tactics utilized by them to deal with the heteronormative surveillance. Secondly, I visit hot spring sites famous for homosexual congregation; I examine them as my case studies so as to closely observe how the location, the degree of openness and other spatial arrangement affect homosexual sex/erotic/communal acts, and how homosexual patrons deal with the heteronormative way of arranging a public locale. Thirdly, I take news reports and documents as texts of studying and investigating the technologies of surveillance and regulation employed by heteronormative institutions. Above all, I intend to employ the theories of power discourses to examine the homosexual performance in hot spring space so as to probe into the relationship between the power and the subject in the exertion of individualization.
This thesis assures the manipulation of the power of the state and that of the market in regulating homosexual acts in hot spring space, whereas it furthermore intends to recognize the homosexuals’ agency of questing restricted sex/erotic/communal longing with their individualized character—autonomy, self-reflexivity and individuality. | en_US |