Queer Nation under the Shadow of National Allegory: Homosexuality and the Nation in Contemporary Taiwanese Literature

Long before the bourgeoning of Taiwan's queer literature in the 1990s, homosexuality already figured in literary representations, but did so mainly to serve an allegorical function. This textual phenomenon is most intriguingly found in narratives of nation-building or nationalist struggles, which enlist homosexuality as symbols of, say, Communist evil (Chiang Kuei), capitalist decadence (Chen Ying-chen), and colonial/neocolonial domination (Li Ang). At the same time, this national allegorization of homosexuality also exists as a hegemonic regime of interpretation, as is acutely evident in the political “decoding” of such homosexual classics as Pai Hsien-yung's Crystal Boys. An even more telling case of which lies in a group of homosexual-themed Hong Kong films that appeared around the 1997 handover and thus have been read accordingly as allegories of this predominant political situation. However, there are still national allegories which, instead of appropriating homosexuality instrumentally, seek to incorporate it into the agenda of national-building, for example in Li Ang's works of progressive sexual politics. This essay will conclude with a brief look at the possible queer counter-strategies of reinscribing the nation that can nevertheless be distilled from several ambivalent texts.