by the marvellous Australian poet, cartoonist and mystic,
Showing posts with label queer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label queer. Show all posts
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Coloured Paper
My original post on this is on the Melbourne Colouring Book
A few days ago, the Australian Government released
The White Paper : Australia in the Asian Century, which "sets out a strategic framework to guide Australia’s navigation of the Asian Century."
The official website says more:
"The scale and pace of Asia’s transformation is unprecedented and the implications for Australia are profound. Australia’s geographic proximity, depth of skills, stable institutions and forward-looking policy settings place it in a unique position to take advantage of the growing influence of the Asian region.
The Australian Government commissioned a White Paper on Australia in the Asian Century to consider the likely economic and strategic changes in the region and what more can be done to position Australia for the Asian Century"
An example of an action that the paper raises is around a long-term investment in "Asia literacy", including mandating that schools across Australia will teach at least one of four priority Asian languages (Mandarin, Hindi, Indonesian, and Japanese).
This, of course, has interesting implications for our national identity. Australia has, colloquially, tended to be referred to (by others, and also self-referentially), as a "Western country," despite being more accurately geographically situated as an island in the South Pacific (Northwest of Aotearoa New Zealand, and mostly actually Southeast of our closest continental neighbour: Asia)...
The word "Western" is very loaded, of course, and I interpret this to mean that Australia tends to trace its national heritage to European, U.S. American, and Anglicised continental roots, while paying lip service to our indigenous Aboriginal heritage. Another connotation of the word "Western," beyond cultural legacy, is of course the suggestion of Whiteness...
There is something quite powerful, as a statement, about nationally committing ourselves to being more geographically honest, in this regard, while also being most economically feasible as a long-term national and cultural investment in this sort of regionalism, in Asia...
A wonderful essay has been written in the Sydney Morning Herald which explores some of these implications...:
Australia's Asian-ness is barely visible
A few days ago, the Australian Government released
The White Paper : Australia in the Asian Century, which "sets out a strategic framework to guide Australia’s navigation of the Asian Century."
The official website says more:
"The scale and pace of Asia’s transformation is unprecedented and the implications for Australia are profound. Australia’s geographic proximity, depth of skills, stable institutions and forward-looking policy settings place it in a unique position to take advantage of the growing influence of the Asian region.
The Australian Government commissioned a White Paper on Australia in the Asian Century to consider the likely economic and strategic changes in the region and what more can be done to position Australia for the Asian Century"
An example of an action that the paper raises is around a long-term investment in "Asia literacy", including mandating that schools across Australia will teach at least one of four priority Asian languages (Mandarin, Hindi, Indonesian, and Japanese).
This, of course, has interesting implications for our national identity. Australia has, colloquially, tended to be referred to (by others, and also self-referentially), as a "Western country," despite being more accurately geographically situated as an island in the South Pacific (Northwest of Aotearoa New Zealand, and mostly actually Southeast of our closest continental neighbour: Asia)...
The word "Western" is very loaded, of course, and I interpret this to mean that Australia tends to trace its national heritage to European, U.S. American, and Anglicised continental roots, while paying lip service to our indigenous Aboriginal heritage. Another connotation of the word "Western," beyond cultural legacy, is of course the suggestion of Whiteness...
There is something quite powerful, as a statement, about nationally committing ourselves to being more geographically honest, in this regard, while also being most economically feasible as a long-term national and cultural investment in this sort of regionalism, in Asia...
A wonderful essay has been written in the Sydney Morning Herald which explores some of these implications...:
by Tim Soutphommasane
Now, I am no politician nor economist, but as a layperson, and as a citizen, I write this post as mere conjecture:
As a queer Asian-Australian man, the thought of an "Asian Century" intrigues me.
The phrase itself speaks to the part of me that is perhaps embarrassingly parochial... Since I was 3 years old, I have not lived in a country in which I was a citizen, nor, since my adult life, one in which I was part of a racial or ethnic majority... I am, of course, simultaneously critical of the ways that nationalist identities can and do reinforce certain forms of racial and cultural supremacy. Extreme nationalism to me has often been suggestive of violence, and at least in the context of the USA and Australia, a subtle and not-so-subtle White supremacy.
And then:
There is something in here, in the metaphor of the "White Paper" and the "Asian Century" which interests me, from a queer perspective.
First, to play with this:
What of a metaphor of Coloured Paper?
(as a metaphorical canvas upon which we could explore policy as well as culture?)
What of a Queer Asian Century?
What does multiculturalism look like, outside of a "Western" framework?
What room is there, given the explicit use of the term "Asian" (as opposed to, for example, "Eastern"), to raise issues not just of multiculturalism (such as Australia has done thus far), but also of multiracialism (e.g. in the case example of Singapore)...? What are the implications of including this explicit discourse of race, given the racially-charged name of the "Asian Century"?
As Soutphommasane has written, where are all of the Asian people in this country already, in terms of being featured in positions of civil service?
What would it mean to inherit a British Parliamentary system, including a number of the cultural 'advancements' that we have made as a country for example around the decriminalisation of homosexuality, when we contrast this with other countries in Asia (or the Asia-Pacific region)?
What happens when a baton is passed, from an Anglo-normative government to a pluralistically Asian-normative government?
Is this actually going to happen?
And what will race look like in such a context?
What will racism look like in such a context?
Now, I am no politician nor economist, but as a layperson, and as a citizen, I write this post as mere conjecture:
As a queer Asian-Australian man, the thought of an "Asian Century" intrigues me.
The phrase itself speaks to the part of me that is perhaps embarrassingly parochial... Since I was 3 years old, I have not lived in a country in which I was a citizen, nor, since my adult life, one in which I was part of a racial or ethnic majority... I am, of course, simultaneously critical of the ways that nationalist identities can and do reinforce certain forms of racial and cultural supremacy. Extreme nationalism to me has often been suggestive of violence, and at least in the context of the USA and Australia, a subtle and not-so-subtle White supremacy.
And then:
There is something in here, in the metaphor of the "White Paper" and the "Asian Century" which interests me, from a queer perspective.
First, to play with this:
What of a metaphor of Coloured Paper?
(as a metaphorical canvas upon which we could explore policy as well as culture?)
What of a Queer Asian Century?
What does multiculturalism look like, outside of a "Western" framework?
What room is there, given the explicit use of the term "Asian" (as opposed to, for example, "Eastern"), to raise issues not just of multiculturalism (such as Australia has done thus far), but also of multiracialism (e.g. in the case example of Singapore)...? What are the implications of including this explicit discourse of race, given the racially-charged name of the "Asian Century"?
As Soutphommasane has written, where are all of the Asian people in this country already, in terms of being featured in positions of civil service?
What would it mean to inherit a British Parliamentary system, including a number of the cultural 'advancements' that we have made as a country for example around the decriminalisation of homosexuality, when we contrast this with other countries in Asia (or the Asia-Pacific region)?
What happens when a baton is passed, from an Anglo-normative government to a pluralistically Asian-normative government?
Is this actually going to happen?
And what will race look like in such a context?
What will racism look like in such a context?
Sunday, August 21, 2011
On Identity, Wholeness and Self...
"I was trying to figure out what it meant to be gay. I soon discovered that I had to figure out what kind of lesbian I was going to be. It was obvious to me almost immediately that I was very different from most other girls. I didn't really fit into either role of 'butch' or 'femme'....In the first few months of coming out to other lesbians, I realised that I was as much a misfit into the gay world as I was in society at large. I was half butch, half femme, neither here nor there. At that point in my life, I didn't understand that playing roles in any relationship is false and will inevitably lead to the relationship's collapse. No-one can be any one thing all the time. There is a great deal of lying done while a role is being played in any relationship, homosexual or heterosexual. As I had tried to fit into the sample size clothing, I also tried to fit into a preconceived idea of what it meant to be gay. And any time I try to fit into a mold made by someone else, whether that means sample size clothing or a strict label of 'butch or 'femme', I lose myself."
- Portia de Rossi (Unbearable Lightness, 2010)
- Portia de Rossi (Unbearable Lightness, 2010)
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Faeries, Bears, and Leathermen
I am currently reading a book that my friend J lent me, called "Faeries, Bears, and Leathermen: Men in Community Queering the Masculine" by Peter Hennen.
The basic idea is that three uniquely gay/queer male cultures, in particular the Radical Faeries, the Bears, and the Leathermen cultures, have partially been constructed as responses to, reactions against, and/or repudiations of the ways that gay male sexuality has historically been linked with effeminacy.
These three groups engage the 'problem' of stereotypic gay male effeminacy in three different ways. For the Radical Faeries, it has been through a deep embrace of the feminine through adorning dresses, communal-Goddess worship, female-kitsch (e.g. the sacralisation of Barbie dolls), etc. For the Bears, it has been the embrace of a 'regular joe' type of masculinity, with the fetishisation of larger, hairier, beer-drinking bodies, and with the Leathermen, it has been through the re-appropriation of costumes and sometimes sado-masochistic impulses historically associated with violent masculinity.
Hennen is careful to avoid pathologising any one of these response-styles, and is quite clearly grateful for having been given the opportunity to participate in the various social spaces and rituals of belonging that each community has constructed for its members. At the same time, Hennen hints at a deeply troubling dialectic that underlies the ways that these gay male communities and identities have been constructed. In particular, with regard to the fact that they, at least in his North American experience, these three groups tend to be disproportionately White, and are concurrent with many other male-centric movements that organise around the 'reclamation' or glamourisation of masculinity without either questioning the fear of the feminine or any other unconscious roots of their undying loyalty.
I am personally troubled by hegemonic masculinism in gay culture(s). I am nervous about the way that gay male culture in general has conflated manhood with the repudiation of the feminine, and indeed, with the repudiation of even our own association with 'gay,' as it has historically been linked with effeminacy. Thus the ubiquity of "str8-acting" as a self-descriptor or as an identity deeply invested with gay male desire.
Secondarily, I am also interested in the way that whiteness is also hegemonic in these communities in the USA which, unlike masculinity, Hennen has largely not interrogated. White masculinity seems far less rooted in ironic play or reclamation.
Questions/Crises of masculinity have occupied me for awhile. In a Euro-centric hierarchy of masculinity, the Grecian male model has been somewhere at the top, whereas, in my experience, the hairless Asian body has been feminised and placed somewhere at the bottom.
I long for spaces I might comfortably exist in. Spaces which do justice to my gendered/racialised identity and body, and in which I can explore a self-communal expression with others in a shared, sacralised experience of sexuality. Spaces which allow for and embrace my capacity & need for critical awareness...
A monastery for colonised whores?
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Buddho-Erotik
an old post...
1
Dancing as religious ritual, the slow uprooting of anxieties (self-consciousness, other-consciousness) into endorphin blissful rush of collapsing dualisms. Drug-free Ecstasis! Body as its own narcotic, all capacity for empowerment and godhead rushing forth from within, neither monotheistic nor pantheistic, neither solely under the jurisdiction of aboriginal cosmologies nor postmodern psychonautic fetishisms of altered states of consciousness. Dance as the primordial movement, the Soul (if indeed, it is YOUR convenient metaphor) as shaken And stirred. Drink That!
2
Or else the surprise a man has, after 20 years of marriage, in finding out his wife has professional, emotional, spiritual, and yes perhaps even Sexual desires beyond his capacity to fulfill. The tragic misnomer of (civil)Marriage mistakenly Romanticised without thought to its materialist history (woman as property of man, man as 'breadwinner,' utilitarian legalisms with little care for the romance behind courtship). Forget MARRIAGE, we need a generation of Lovers!
3
The phenomenon of wanting to know more about a porn star: When objectification (primarily root-chakra sexual orientation) isn't enough. When personality needs to be thrown in the mix. When love must become involved. Or worship. Porn stars as our contemporary Gods and Goddesses, sex celebrities, all springing forth from the same imaginations that created Zeus, Inanna, Kali.
Ejaculation as the Anti-climax, if indeed there was no Play prior, nor love between lovers. Surely we are not only bodies, as we are not only minds, nor even only souls. Dissolve dissolve, and we no more need porn stars as we might need a caffeine fix (some addiction necessary to fuel some other addiction, to Manhood? Productivity? Or even our attachments to secret shame!); Forget it! We might imagine a new myth!
4
Music as love making, the melding of players that transcends Sexual orientation. Instead, music taps into the latent masculinities/femininities hidden under sexed bodies, transmutes the urge to orgasm into lovemaking. Plays on aggression and submission, sound and silence, assertions and refrains, repetitions and innovations... Hence: The Bliss of making music as PROCESS, rather than performative product. Nothing wrong with theatre, clearly, for indeed that is a catharsis in its own right. But within the privacy of a relationship, there is generative power in music as interpersonal communication, rather than preparation for Objective display. "Let's jam!" I say, from the Me that is Lovemaker-Sage... I let the Bard speak his truth at some other convenient time.
5
"The Matrix" as theology. Neo as Bodhisattva figure, realizing the futility of samsaric existence within The Matrix of the mundane. Morpheus as Buddha-figure (the first to discover the truth of samsaric-Matrix), transmitting his teaching to those who may be prepared to forgo this illusory world for the higher consciousness, breaking free from the bonds of cyclic existence. BUT THIS IS NOT BLISS! Neo is not Happier with Truth, simply Ennoblised by this. But is this ENOUGH? Like the dude who WANTS to return, to taste the steak, to feed on illusion; We too are addicted, we forgo truth everytime, no matter what our intuitions may tell us, simply because it is TOO DAMN HARD. What support might we look for? How may we Re-program, so we too might dodge bullets with ease?
6
Language is the original colonizer, with its grammatical pressures, its dogmatic vocabularies, its limits within the technologies of throat or papyrus. We must learn to speak if we are to interact, but then we forever lose our touch with the solitude of silence. But even here I have been thoroughly colonized, for that I have even a CONCEPTION of silence is conditioned by my capacity for Language. There is no PRE, no prior, no before language. And any mystic would dare tell us that there is no During, nor After, even. Language itself cannot be spoken of (nor kept silent on) without continued inculcations into further illusion. So forget the goal, and just play with poetry!
7
Where does loneliness reside in the body? Is it in the heart? Or perhaps in clammy extremeties, hands wrung in nervous tics, The Longing to Grasp, without the wisdom to learn the freedom of the Ungrasp (for there is nothing beautiful to be Held without our fathoming equally the beauty of Letting Go). The foolishness in us that wants a Love Permanent is the same foolishness in us that takes all we already have for granted!
Unconditional Love? There is no-thing unconditioned, no-thing without cause. I cannot HAVE unconditional love for another; I can only invest, indefinitely, in creating the causes and conditions from and in which love might more easily arise, 'effortlessly'! I must not, however, mistake those rare, precious moments of spontaneity as springing from some romantic Unconditioned!
8
In a prior life, I was a Diamond. But a single carbon atom wanted individuation, wanted to break free from the boring familiar, wanting to procreate instead with exotic elements, wanting to form new molecular civilizations, wanting new bondage (double-bondage? triple?).
9
Why make love? Love can make itself! My only job is to breathe as much as I can, consciously, until finally I expire.
1
Dancing as religious ritual, the slow uprooting of anxieties (self-consciousness, other-consciousness) into endorphin blissful rush of collapsing dualisms. Drug-free Ecstasis! Body as its own narcotic, all capacity for empowerment and godhead rushing forth from within, neither monotheistic nor pantheistic, neither solely under the jurisdiction of aboriginal cosmologies nor postmodern psychonautic fetishisms of altered states of consciousness. Dance as the primordial movement, the Soul (if indeed, it is YOUR convenient metaphor) as shaken And stirred. Drink That!
2
Or else the surprise a man has, after 20 years of marriage, in finding out his wife has professional, emotional, spiritual, and yes perhaps even Sexual desires beyond his capacity to fulfill. The tragic misnomer of (civil)Marriage mistakenly Romanticised without thought to its materialist history (woman as property of man, man as 'breadwinner,' utilitarian legalisms with little care for the romance behind courtship). Forget MARRIAGE, we need a generation of Lovers!
3
The phenomenon of wanting to know more about a porn star: When objectification (primarily root-chakra sexual orientation) isn't enough. When personality needs to be thrown in the mix. When love must become involved. Or worship. Porn stars as our contemporary Gods and Goddesses, sex celebrities, all springing forth from the same imaginations that created Zeus, Inanna, Kali.
Ejaculation as the Anti-climax, if indeed there was no Play prior, nor love between lovers. Surely we are not only bodies, as we are not only minds, nor even only souls. Dissolve dissolve, and we no more need porn stars as we might need a caffeine fix (some addiction necessary to fuel some other addiction, to Manhood? Productivity? Or even our attachments to secret shame!); Forget it! We might imagine a new myth!
4
Music as love making, the melding of players that transcends Sexual orientation. Instead, music taps into the latent masculinities/femininities hidden under sexed bodies, transmutes the urge to orgasm into lovemaking. Plays on aggression and submission, sound and silence, assertions and refrains, repetitions and innovations... Hence: The Bliss of making music as PROCESS, rather than performative product. Nothing wrong with theatre, clearly, for indeed that is a catharsis in its own right. But within the privacy of a relationship, there is generative power in music as interpersonal communication, rather than preparation for Objective display. "Let's jam!" I say, from the Me that is Lovemaker-Sage... I let the Bard speak his truth at some other convenient time.
5
"The Matrix" as theology. Neo as Bodhisattva figure, realizing the futility of samsaric existence within The Matrix of the mundane. Morpheus as Buddha-figure (the first to discover the truth of samsaric-Matrix), transmitting his teaching to those who may be prepared to forgo this illusory world for the higher consciousness, breaking free from the bonds of cyclic existence. BUT THIS IS NOT BLISS! Neo is not Happier with Truth, simply Ennoblised by this. But is this ENOUGH? Like the dude who WANTS to return, to taste the steak, to feed on illusion; We too are addicted, we forgo truth everytime, no matter what our intuitions may tell us, simply because it is TOO DAMN HARD. What support might we look for? How may we Re-program, so we too might dodge bullets with ease?
6
Language is the original colonizer, with its grammatical pressures, its dogmatic vocabularies, its limits within the technologies of throat or papyrus. We must learn to speak if we are to interact, but then we forever lose our touch with the solitude of silence. But even here I have been thoroughly colonized, for that I have even a CONCEPTION of silence is conditioned by my capacity for Language. There is no PRE, no prior, no before language. And any mystic would dare tell us that there is no During, nor After, even. Language itself cannot be spoken of (nor kept silent on) without continued inculcations into further illusion. So forget the goal, and just play with poetry!
7
Where does loneliness reside in the body? Is it in the heart? Or perhaps in clammy extremeties, hands wrung in nervous tics, The Longing to Grasp, without the wisdom to learn the freedom of the Ungrasp (for there is nothing beautiful to be Held without our fathoming equally the beauty of Letting Go). The foolishness in us that wants a Love Permanent is the same foolishness in us that takes all we already have for granted!
Unconditional Love? There is no-thing unconditioned, no-thing without cause. I cannot HAVE unconditional love for another; I can only invest, indefinitely, in creating the causes and conditions from and in which love might more easily arise, 'effortlessly'! I must not, however, mistake those rare, precious moments of spontaneity as springing from some romantic Unconditioned!
8
In a prior life, I was a Diamond. But a single carbon atom wanted individuation, wanted to break free from the boring familiar, wanting to procreate instead with exotic elements, wanting to form new molecular civilizations, wanting new bondage (double-bondage? triple?).
9
Why make love? Love can make itself! My only job is to breathe as much as I can, consciously, until finally I expire.
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