This thesis seeks to trace the representations of male homosexuality in Taiwanese society since the 1970s, with a specific focus on the legacies and representations of Pai Hsien-yung’s novel Niezi (Crystal Boys, published in 1983), widely regarded as the first full-length novel themed on homosexuality in Taiwan’s literary history. Set in 1970s Taiwan during the Martial Law period, the novel’s portrayal of the underground homosexual community and male prostitution culture based in Taipei’s New Park (now 228 Park) did not capture critical attention or gain commercial success when published, owing to the then conservative social atmosphere. Nonetheless, after the lifting of Martial Law, as Taiwan became a democratised nation with mature elective democracy and participation in globalised cultural circuits, Niezi became canonised and politicised as the iconic text for a sequence of social activism regarding homosexual human rights in academia and related cultural activities in the 1990s and 2000s. Even today, Niezi is still considered the most debatable representative homosexual literary text in Taiwan’s homosexual community. While Niezi’s iconic status has stood the test of time over the past three decades, the changing interpretations of the text offer a great resource through which to examine the representations of male homosexuality in Taiwan during this period. Taiwanese society transformed from an authoritarian regime in the 1970s and 1980s, to quasi-democracy in the early 1990s, then full elective democracy in the mid-1990s, and now Taiwan has fully joined the globalised circuits of the capitalist economy, with free markets, cross-cultural communication and rapid flows of information. This social transformation brought about changing interpretations of Niezi, in which male homosexuality was no longer a social taboo, and activist cultural critics started to demand equal rights for homosexuals inspired by Euro-American theoretical discourse and social reform. The social transformation also saw two visual adaptations of the novel through the forms of film and television, which I shall examine in this thesis. I will also demonstrate not just how male homosexuality has been represented in different social contexts, but also what has contributed to the endurance of Niezi’s legacies in the past three decades. In addition, while there was a great amount of homosexual literature produced after the lifting of Martial Law owing to social liberalisation, the thesis will also consider Niezi’s continuing iconic status.

My work explores subculture as a form of cultural resistance to the dominant ideology. I'm concerned with the ambiguous relationship we occupy as subjects to the material produced by popular culture, and how this is digested and understood by female viewers and cultural outsiders. The specific temporality of the queer subject is a key theme in my work.

This thesis presents the basic principles of the functioning of the heteronormative order: in what way heterosexuality is constructed as the norm and in what way it is maintained as such. The thesis simultaneously examines the possibilities of disrupting the heteronormative order, creating queer spaces, and defining the term queer and queer politics in the framework of a queer subculture. The aim of the research carried out within the thesis is to contribute to the visibility of queer subculture, present ways in which the term queer is used in queer subculture and show to what degree the examined queer subcultural spaces are created as open spaces and to whom they are accessible. In the Czech Republic the term queer is used as a synonym for LGBT identities or as an umbrella term for LGBTI people and activities. Nevertheless, as follows from the analysis of semi-structured interviews, the term queer can have even other meanings. It can express criticism of heteronormativity, homonormativity, mainstream LGBT politics and culture, and the attempt to overcome the norms connected with gender and sexuality. In this regard, the term queer can refer not only to an identity and also to a political position. The interweaving of queer and feminist theory can be inspiring not only for the development of gender...