Open Collections

Quach, Aydin Man Chun

University of British Columbia

This thesis introduces a methodology in which we might be able to envision queer archives built around desire, affect, memory, and sexual fantasy. In light of Section 377A being repealed, how might archives be different if obscenity was introduced back into the archive? I construct an affective, sticky archive of queer history centered around the experiences of queer cisgender men, as well as transgender and non-binary individuals in Singapore from 1990 to the present day who have undergone mandatory National Service (NS) military conscription: a pivotal experience that denotes the change from “boy” to “man.” I specifically focus on men who score high on fitness and intelligence tests and get accepted into the Officer Cadet School (OCS). As part of OCS, enlistees are given specific-coloured singlets or tank tops that denote their class and rank over other individuals who did not make it into OCS. Within the cultural fabric of Singapore’s internet space, this has become the topic of sexual fetish for queer people, being heavily circulated on internet forums, pornography, and the resale marketplace. I “cruise” the internet to find the archive that is tender and wishes to be seen and loved. These include grassroots queer oral history projects as well as discussion posts and sexual fantasy/stories on internet forums about OCS, NS, and sexual experiences during and after NS. The OCS singlet becomes a method to think through masculinity, colonialism, nationalism, sexual racism, and gender performance in Singapore. In closing, I expand the practice of history through Elizabeth Freeman’s reparative notion of erotohistoriography, and what we consider “historical” through thinking of cruising and the act of sexual fantasy writing as not ahistorical, but rather as, reparative of trauma, emotion, as dreaming of a queer future, and as a way of demarcating queer existence in Singapore.

Text

2024-10-24

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/89497

History

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/