Queer Autoethnography on Knowledge Production and the Limit of Resistance

In the last decade, under state mandate, academic policing in Chinese universities has intensified, enforced through increasing surveillance by university administrations on students and faculty engaged in “sensitive” research. This paper draws on the method of autoethnography grounded in critical reflexivity to critically examine the experiences and stakes of conducting LGBTQ+ research within a prestigious university in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). By centering the subjectivity and reflexivity of queer and trans scholars, it frames “ku’er autoethnography” as an autotheoretical approach to explore the complex entanglements between queer/trans knowledge production, authoritarian governmentality, and neoliberal postsocialism in contemporary China. As once a queer and trans-identified undergraduate student who received interdisciplinary training at a university in Beijing, the author reflects on their lived experience of engaging in LGBTQ+ research and interrogates how queer/trans knowledge is produced and ascribed meanings in PRC universities. Reflecting on the labor of knowledge production—including initiating research projects, seeking collaborators, conducting fieldwork, applying for awards, and pursuing publication—this paper foregrounds the researcher’s positionality and the strategic negotiations throughout the process. It argues that queer knowledge production in PRC universities is sanitized by the intersecting governmentalities of state authoritarianism and neoliberal postsocialism as a global condition. Permissible LGBTQ+ research is either assimilated into the state’s agendas of public health and pronatalism or reframed as neoliberal self-fulfillment and the accumulation of transnational cultural capital. This paper discusses the limits in understanding queer/trans knowledge production as assumed field of resistance and calls for a critical approach to reimagine scholarly resistance and solidarity. Employing a ku’er autoethnographic method grounded in critical reflexivity, this work transforms the very act of scholarly writing into a form of intellectual defiance. By foregrounding the researcher’s lived experience and self-reflection, the study illuminates both stakes and radical potentials in queer and trans scholarship, aligning with the conference’s focus on building resistance in times of repression.