Topological spaces of embodied becoming: Queens, queerness and (infra)structural subterfuge in Singapore

• Main Author: WOODS, Orlando
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2023
• Subjects: Infrastructural bodies; topological space; drag queens; Queer Asia; Singapore; Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Sociology
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/123
• Institution: Singapore Management University

This paper considers the political potential that emerges when theoriza- tions of the body-as-infrastructure are brought into conversation with theorizations of topological space. It argues that the infrastructural body provides an interface through which structural norms can be destabilized, and the interrelationships between the state, society, and self can be reimagined. These ideas are illustrated through an empirical exploration of drag queens in Singapore. Singapore is a socially conservative Asian city-state in which heteronormative values are passed down by the state, reproduced through the family, and then used to structure societal under- standings of gender and sexuality. By interpreting Singapore’s hegemonic state-society spaces in topological terms, drag queens reveal a modality of queerness that is not necessarily deviant, or apart-from, the country’s non- queer public spaces, but is mutually constitutive of them instead. Through (infra)structuralization, the drag body reveals a potentiality that trans- cends the strictures of everyday life. Accordingly, the paper advances the politico-theoretical promise of ‘Queer Asia’.