Panel Proposal on China’s Politics of Love
The panel will be cross-disciplinary and does not restrict its focus to a particular historical period. Papers from within the fields of art, literature, intellectual history, cultural studies and LGBTQ studies are particularly welcome, but contributions from the field of anthropology, sociology and political thought are also invited.

Please email your proposals to Dr Gerda Wielander, wielang@westminster.ac.uk . Your proposal should include an abstract of 250 words and brief biographical information. Deadline for submission is Wednesday 18 July 2012.

This panel takes Michael Hardt’s experimental formulation of a ‘politics of love’ as inspiration to explore China’s politics of love through a variety of aspects inherent in Hardt’s conception. Hardt proposes love as a new social concept - to replace solidarity
- as a field of training to ensure that society becomes a ‘space of free interaction of differences and one that facilitates joyful encounters’.

Hardt’s conception of love as a field to be trained in is echoed in many official writings coming out of contemporary China; love is also a central concept of the ‘harmonious society’. But unlike the ‘harmonious society’, Hardt’s conception is a radical proposal to harness the love generated in free, sexual love (among other kinds of love) in order to establish a new form of living together as a society.

This panel seeks to explore more radical facets of the politics of love that challenge the official discourse. What place does love have in Chinese society? How does love shape society? How is love defined? What alternative notions of love and living together are proposed from within China’s LGBTQ community? What contributions does China’s artistic and political diaspora make to social utopias (premised on love)? Where and who are/were China’s radical and utopian thinkers on love?

For Michael Hardt’s politics or concept of love please see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwOMLLOLLuQ or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioopkoppabI