Open Access(Un)gendering the homoerotic body: Imagining subjects in boys' love and yaoi
Author(s) -
Mark McHarry
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
transformative works and cultures
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1941-2258
DOI - 10.3983/twc.2011.0257
Subject(s) - subjectivity , subject (documents) , identity (music) , gender studies , reading (process) , masculinity , psychoanalysis , psychology , art , sociology , aesthetics , philosophy , linguistics , epistemology , library science , computer science
Language is a condition for a subject's formation, and identity is a factor in a subject's understanding of self. The Japanese-derived literary forms boys' love and yaoi portray male subjects as valorizing and acting on same-sex erotic desire, yet with little or no sense of possessing a same-sex desiring identity. Following Elizabeth Grosz, Julia Kristeva, and Michel Foucault, a reading is performed of a Western yaoi fan fic to explore how subjects in yaoi and boys' love enter into language, and hence subjectivity