Introduction 簡介

This is a strange thesis, which mainly explores race and queerness, both of which are unstable and unpredictable in nature. The starting question for me is: as a queer Sinophone artist, I am subjected to the double otherness of Eurocentric and Sinocentric art, and for an artist who may live in Europe for a long time in the future, how do I approach theory and practice?

Drawing on Mel Y. Chen’s insights, there exists a often overlooked nexus where the dynamics of race and queerness resonate powerfully and incessantly. Chen illuminates this intersection as a site of constant flux, a locus where transformation is both inevitable and palpable (Chen, 2023). This realm of change, as Chen argues, is fraught with potential peril -- it can herald the risk of loss, the allure of spiritual departure, or even the promise of revolution. Through Chen’s lens, this space is identified with toxicity, a poignant reflection on the historical intertwining of queerness and exposure to hazardous environments, with BIPOCs disproportionately affected by toxic chemical exposure.

My interest in toxicity came from a conversation with an astrologer who learned about my powerful energies stemming from the Taurus-Scorpio axis. My teenage and romantic years were characterized by countless self-harms and controlling, toxic, dark love affairs, and he suggested that dealing with relationships with others was always at the forefront of my mind. Later he said that my Jupiter in the 11th house meant I could enjoy “a great gathering of different guests.”

This thesis explores the politics of knowledge within academic contexts, focusing on a mode of knowledge creation that draws on the notions of toxicity or intoxication. This approach suggests a dynamic, ongoing generative process that intertwines personal experience and theoretical reflection, as delineated by Lionnet & Shih (2011). My work seeks a resonance between the self and knowledge, acknowledging the transient nature of ideas and the personal selection of materials that resonate with me, akin to Chen’s (2023) emphasis on seeking intellectual intimacy and engagement with chosen texts.

Inspired by Daisy Lafarge (2023), I wanted to be more personal in my approach to writing -- trying to think and remain irreconcilable. In writing, I refer to philosophy, art, religion, and many other things to make my perception wild and amateurish again. Amateurs are “lovers”, and their claims to knowledge are necessarily partial, vernacular, and localized. It is also an obsession or a passing fascination. After all, any object can be an object of love. Therefore, the use of citations in this thesis does not seek completeness or thoroughness.

Some citation density will appear in this thesis because this is my way of thinking; here, “differential” finds itself arrayed across many dimensions, nameable and unnameable. I advocate for the function of suspension to challenge the colonialist impulses of categorization, cognition, and control, and instead to promote the recognition of the inherent complexity and unknowability of existence.

Drawing on Chen (2023), I argue that the thinking and writing modes universities advocate are rich in tools and precise vocabulary, including both lexical and physical ones, that can be repurposed. However, these are deeply entangled with the demands of capital and hierarchy, and are intricately linked to explicit efforts of eugenic and colonialist domination, both historically and currently. Chen’s insights further illuminate how neurodivergence subverts traditional academic frameworks, leading to a unique cycle of accretive iteration: quick reading gives way to slow thinking, which leads to quick writing, followed by slow reading, quick thinking, and slow writing. This cycle underscores the complex interplay between academic demands and the need for diverse cognitive approaches in scholarly work.

The situation of being constantly marginalized and isolated in the Netherlands has made me continuously think about the issue of “the Other.” I have tried to raise the issue of racial injustice with other people in the school multiple times. But as Sara Ahmed (2023) said, “When you expose a problem you pose a problem. It might then be assumed that the problem would go away if you would just stop talking about it or if you went away.” Despite the topic of decolonization entering the school’s education, white classmates are more concerned about what “decolonization” as a trendy topic can bring to them, while the most real struggles of BIPOCs are still ignored. As Lee Edelman (2023) said, “College education - these courses are entertainment, they are like programs on cable televisions, like ‘Friends’, aiming to attract you to become an alumnus, get the taste of being educated.” The only issue my classmates are concerned with is what resources or expectations the school can bring them for a better future, contributing to the erection of Eurocentric art.

This discomfort with Western education needs to be traced back to when I entered a British university when the whole class was mostly Chinese. I had a memorable experience in a communications class where a teacher from the Netherlands boldly claimed that Chinese students were unable to think about problems like Western people. Throughout the semester, he solely presented Western theories in class. Predictably, I did not succeed in the course. Most Chinese students dislike theories, as they perceive them to be disconnected from their daily lives. It was only recently after taking courses in Sinophone Studies that I realized that this is related to the decontextualization of the theory. In The Creolization of Theory, Shu-mei Shih (2011) suggests that the fundamental reason for the decontextualization of theories is actually that in American academia, the acceptance process of theory has filtered out the externality and peculiarity of theory, turning it into a textbook-style critical theory and reproducing it within the academy.

It’s not just the “decolonization” I mentioned above that has been decontextualized from real human struggles, and represented as a theory (rather than a practice) within the academy. Similarly, the concept of “the Other” is violently simplified in this way. The concept of “the Other”, has been critically reinterpreted through post-structuralism, revealing its various functions in deconstructing concepts of subjectivity, centrality, and presence. However, even as we follow the footsteps of post-structuralism, an unavoidable reality is the implication of “Eurocentrism” and “universalism” embedded within. Based on this presupposition, “the Other” in critical theory turns out to be a form of the “Other of the self,” a trembling posture of the Eurocentric self who is encountering an abstract Other, and a narcissistic exploration of the self’s unknowable aspects (Zhang, 2023). Simultaneously, we seem to confront the conclusion drawn by Spivak, that “the subaltern cannot speak.”

We must realize the fact that whether it is Europe, Mesoamerica, or China, none have remained the same after modern global colonialism. Despite not experiencing complete colonization by Western powers, China has undergone a rapid process of globalization. As a result, China consistently finds itself in a situation similar to that of post-colonial societies. Again, after taking the Sinophone Studies courses, I have realized that employing feminist theories or minority theories can assist the Chinese people in navigating the challenges posed by globalization. The book The Creolization of Theory has been instrumental in guiding my thinking about how minorities and marginalized groups within Western contexts can engage in theoretical discussions with the larger systems they encounter, while also developing theories rooted in their own lived experiences.

Reflecting on how Western academia often mandates its frameworks (e.g., decolonization, the Other) onto diverse discourses, I am prompted to revisit the complexity and nuance in semantic exploration. This reconsideration is inspired by the realization that the dynamic interplay of “living others” within theoretical discussions could benefit from a shift towards a “gathering of notions” rather than a reliance on rigid concepts. The term “notion,” as utilized here, is enriched by its associations with femininity and craftsmanship, suggesting a nuanced, ephemeral entity ripe with creative promise. According to Chen (2023), a notion is akin to a valuable yet subtle commodity, distinguished not by its tangibility but by the vibrant meaning it harbors -- a potential that is both illuminated and obscured by its transient nature. Such notions are inherently interdependent, requiring collective assembly to reveal their full spectrum of significance.

This thesis is going to be a little attempt at “gathering of notions”. These notions are expanded from the three main ones: “race”, “queerness” and “toxicity”. Forms vary between dialectical and poetic (some parts are in the form of poetry, as talked about in Intoxicated Thinking). In a conversation between Mindy Seu and Legacy Russell (2021), they mentioned that an essay anthology or digital index, in their presentations of new histories, might serve as maps. By aggregating nodes and markers, hard research, and scattered facts, these containers might surface suppressed voices among the connections they draw, as introduced by Saidiya Hartman’s notion of “critical fabulation.”

The form of an alphabet is utilized as a flexible system of organization that allows for endless expansion and combination of terms, offering a way to sequence ideas without a rigid logical structure. This characteristic, celebrated by figures like Roland Barthes and John Cage, enables the creation of new languages and sets of terms, justifying the presentation and potential abbreviation of texts. The alphabet’s combinatory nature allows for the selective removal of words while preserving or refining a message’s essence, leveraging its capacity for endless reconfiguration of language.

Different from the traditional alphabet, I hope to recombine my living experience and these notions, repeatedly incorporate personal subjectivity, and guide repeated, skipping, unlearning, and rhizomatic reading. As Bolivian feminist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui (2010) aptly states, “There can be no discourse of decolonization, no theory of decolonization, without a decolonizing practice.”