From Citizenship to Queer Counterpublic: Reading Taipei's New Park

• Published in: Communal/plural Vol. 8; no. 1; pp. 81 - 94
• Main Author: Martin, Fran
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis Group 01.04.2000
• Subjects: Cultural Conflict; Global Cities; Globalisation; Homosexuality; Lesbian And Gay; Local Government; Local Politics; Parks; Political Culture; Public Space; Publicprivate; Rhetoric; Sexual Behavior; Taipei, Taiwan; Urban Space
• ISSN: 1320-7873
• DOI: 10.1080/13207870050001475

This paper focuses on the ways in which official narratives of the 'global city' in 1990s Taipei project models of sexuality which are negotiated and contested by gay and lesbian (tongzhi) activist practices and discourses. Analysing the densely symbolic site of Taipei's New Park and particularly the Democratic Progressive Party City Government's plans for its redevelopment (1995-96), the paper considers the tense relation which the liberal rhetoric of a space made newly 'public' bears to the sexually non-normative practices of male homosexual cruising which traditionally take place in New Park and the surrounding city block. Examining the City Government's liberal rhetoric on homosexuality (tongxinglian), the paper contrasts this rhetoric with the more conservative and overtly homophobic sexual politics espoused by other regimes in the region. It also attempts to unpack the logic that enables such a self-consciously 'tongzhi-friendly' administration nevertheless to continue harshly to discipline men who practise homosex in the newly 'public' spaces of the park and the street. Finally, the paper discusses some critical responses by tongzhi writers and activists to the City Government's rewriting of the 'public' and the 'private' for the new Taipei.