Remembering Confucian Homoeroticism

Abstract

This essay probes the modes of remembering Confucian homoeroticism to unsettle Orientalist idealization and homonationalist hierarchy in anglophone scholarship. The author retrieves queer terms such as cut sleeve, male favorites, shared peach, paired eating, Longyang, a different fragrance, wildflowers, and southern wind to show how canonical disapproval of homoeroticism was imbricated with social dynamics to unpredictable effect, thus leaving enormous latitude for forging queer subjectivity. In conversation with the materialist turn in queer theory, the author argues that if our search for a queer Confucian past is limited to finding analogs to European “homosexuality” as a category of sexual identity—and if our criterion for this search is the permission/prohibition divide or the quantity of representation—we risk missing much of queer existence under Confucianism in all its textured complexity. Finally, the author asks how alternate forms of naming might indicate possibilities for queer life less bound by the preoccupations of European juridical (genital configuration), magisterial theological (gender complementarity), and psychological (sexual aim or object) modes of knowing, as well as their descendants in gay liberationist and multiculturalist discourse.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 2026 · DOI ↗