Queer Singapore

Unique to the Singaporean LGBT scene is the ambivalence of the creative yet entrepreneurial, the culturally liberalized yet sexually repressive, and the post-colonial yet illiberal, all lucidly discussed in this volume that tackles the ironic complexities of queer ingenuity/queer complicity. -- Josephine Ho, National Central University, Taiwan An exciting and noteworthy contribution to the burgeoning field of queer Asia studies, the volume highlights the importance of theorizing sexuality from the specificity of local sites while being carefully attuned to how such sites are produced through global processes. The editors grapple with the central contradiction that characterizes the Singapore nation-state today: its ongoing criminalization of homosexuality on the one hand, and its embrace of cultural liberalization on the other, which has helped to make Singapore one of the epicenters of gay life in Asia. The collection allows us to understand queer culture in Singapore as not merely resistant nor assimilationist, but rather as emerging from an imaginative negotiation of these paradoxes of neoliberal postcoloniality. -- Gayatri Gopinath, New York University