[csaa-forum] Reminder: ‘Chinese racialisation and technologies of mothering: Continuities in straight and queer reproduction in Singapore' (Shawna Tang, ACS Virtual Lecture Series)

[Timothy Laurie]

Dear colleagues,

Just a reminder about the upcoming talk in its Virtual Lecture Series, by Shawna Tang (University of Sydney, Australia), titled ‘Chinese racialisation and technologies of mothering: Continuities in straight and queer reproduction in Singapore’ (followed by a Q&A), which will take place on October 24th, 4 PM AET/ Australian Eastern Time (GMT +11) (more information underneath).

Title: Chinese racialisation and technologies of mothering: Continuities in straight and queer reproduction in Singapore 
Speaker: Dr Shawna Tang (University of Sydney, Australia)
Time: 4 PM AET/ Australian Eastern Time (GMT +11), October 24th, 2023

Abstract: In this paper, I bring together a set of three disjunctive scenes in Singapore relating to Chinese mothers, straight and lesbian. One, what has been called “the AWARE saga” in 2009; two, graduate mothers in the 1980s; and three, lesbian mothering in contemporary time. In this triangulation, my analysis focuses on educated Chinese women and mothers across the historical contexts as paradigmatic formations of a protected class encouraged to reproduce and pass on their hereditary material, historically, by the technocratic Singaporean state in the 1980s that afforded Chinese mothers various forms of protection, and in contemporary time, via neoliberal circuits of capital that enable the agential, transnationally-mobile Singaporean lesbian to access artificial reproductive technologies to have children. I show how forms of strategic manipulation of these women’s embodiment and “abilities” across the historical contexts demonstrate forms of racial capacitation, that afford security on the one hand, and susceptibility to biopolitical control on the other, through the capaciousness of their bodies figured as endlessly available for reinvigoration (for neoliberalism). Thinking convivially about the relations between straight and lesbian mothers might enable a possibility for politics that cuts across the sexuality divide.

Bio: Dr Shawna Tang is Senior Lecturer in Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. Her research lies in the nexus of sexuality, gender and race. Specifically, she studies how queer identities, communities and politics need to take seriously questions of race, nationalism, capitalism and geopolitics. She is the author of Postcolonial Lesbian Identities in Singapore and co-editor of Queer Southeast Asia, and is part of the ARC-funded Boys Studies Research group focusing on transmasculine boyhoods.

To register for this free event, please email: mailto:vls at cultstud.org 

Please note that email registration is an automated process. If you do NOT receive a reply to your email with the relevant information within an hour, please check your spam folder, as some ISPs will treat this automated reply as spam. If the automated VLS message is not in your spam folder, please email mailto:info at cultstud.org for more personal assistance.

For more information on the Virtual Lecture Series and upcoming talks, please visit: https://www.cultstud.org/wordpress/virtual-lecture-series/

Upcoming VLS talks (more details TBA):
November — Nomusa Makhubu (University of Cape Town, South Africa)
December — Diana Adesola Mafe (Denison University, USA)
January 2024 — Holly Randell-Moon (Charles Sturt University, Australia)
February — Julieta Infantino (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina)
March — Poppy Wilde (Birmingham City University, UK)
April — Mengyu Luo (University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, PRC)
May — Runchao Liu (University of Denver, USA)
June — Lindsay Balfour (Coventry University, UK)

For more information, visit https://www.cultstud.org/wordpress/virtual-lecture-series/ 
Archive of the previous talks https://www.cultstud.org/wordpress/archive/ 
Recordings are available on the Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/@association_for_cultural_studies_acs_ 
 
For questions and comments, please contact mailto:info at cultstud.org

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