Diversity in “Asia’s world city”? Mobilizing homonationalist discourse in support of the Gay Games Hong Kong

About the talk:

In this talk, I focus on the multidirectionalities of homonationalism via public debates surrounding the 11th Gay Games, held in the Chinese Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong in 2023.

The timing of this international LGBTQ+ event brought local forms of homonationalism to the fore, given that Hong Kong has recently undergone transformative top-down processes that have sought to reshape the values of the city (and its citizens) in alignment with Beijing’s emphasis on national security. This emphasis promotes patriotism via adherence to “traditional” Chinese political and social values along with suspicion of “foreign influences,” thus impacting and limiting socially progressive movements in the city in various ways.

As such, the Gay Games attracted attention from some local lawmakers who accused it of being a“disgrace” and a “danger” to national interests. In turn, such posturing sparked a public debate on how, conversely, the holding of the Gay Games services the “Hong Kong as Asia’s world city” brand, where values of inclusivity and diversity are essential to maintaining its global standing. 

Drawing on theories developed in Asian contexts that aim to rework dominant (western) queer theorizations of homonationalism in locally sensitive ways (Kong 2023; Lazar2017), I center my analysis on a selection of opinion pieces and reader letters published in the South China Morning Post, the leading English language newspaper in the region. 

Applying an analytical framework of practical reasoning (Fairclough and Fairclough 2011), I will demonstrate how the citizen writers of these letters use argumentation strategies (claims, circumstances, goals, and values) that mobilize forms of homonationalist discourse to argue for the importance of holding the Gay Games with respect to national image and interests. In doing so, I draw attention to how homonationalism may play a somewhat ambivalent role in this case. This is both as a discursive means of upholding tropes of normative, neoliberal belonging, in line with the Hong Kong brand, and as a means of challenging the emergence of exclusionary nationalist rhetorics in this context.

About the speaker:

Benedict Rowlett is a sociocultural linguist and discourse analyst with research interests in language learning, gender and sexuality, narrative inquiry, queer (applied) linguistics and critical ethnography. His recent work has focused on the intersections between language, identity, sexualities, and social action in Asian contexts, including research on Pride events in Asia. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Hong Kong Baptist University.