Po-Han Lee

LGBT rights versus Asian values: de/re-constructing the universality of human rights

Law, especially from the international human rights regime, is a direct reference on which minority groups rely when it comes to ‘non-discrimination’. Drawing upon LGBT rights in Taiwan, as well as Hong Kong and Singapore, this article – through an application of K.H. Chen’s (2010) Asia as Method – critically reviews how global LGBT politics interact with local societies influenced by Confucianism. Along a perpetual competition between the universalism and cultural relativism of human rights, this article not only identifies the pitfalls of ‘Asian values’ from a cosmopolitan perspective but also contributes to a queered approach to human rights-holders against homonationalism.

Queer activism in Taiwan: an emergent rainbow coalition from the assemblage perspective

A social movement for sexual and gender minorities (the Movement) emerged in Taiwan around the 1990s after the abolition of martial law in 1987. This article, drawing on Deleuze’s assemblage theory, looks at how activists negotiate and compete over constructing the discourses of sexual rights and citizenship in a context of democratic transition. With the recent ‘Renaissance’ of conservatism, which combines Confucianism and Christianity, the Movement has been thus de- and reterritorialised in response, and such a process has brought to the fore a rainbow coalition – a larger composition of assemblage rather than simply a descriptor. Gaining greater leverage and influence on society, the coalition, based on the pursuit of self-determination and self-liberation, has inversely provided soil for a cosmopolitan identity of Taiwaneseness to grow.