THiS Workshop of Chinese Societies (2025 Spring)

Abstract

In 1938, colonial officials in Singapore and London were fixated on the fate of a magistrate R, who was suspected of homosexual relations with colonial subjects. His case was a sign of things to come, as other high-ranking male officials and elites were also implicated in what the Colonial Office called the “Malayan ‘sexual perversion’ cases.” Such same-sex activities between European men and the colonized formed part of the repressed underlives of the modern British empire: in practice, colonial domination fostered unequal, wayward intimacies – what I call “minor articulations” – that unsettled the rule of colonial difference. Adapting Patil’s (2022) methodology of “thinking sideways” to feel sideways and trace the affective ties that actors form with others, I draw on a declassified file on R’s disciplinary hearing and delve into the pivotal testimonies of the local witnesses who spoke about or against him. Bringing their utterances and embodied standpoints to the foreground, this methodological shift unsettles the colonial gaze, and queers readings of the archives. Conceptualizing minor articulations as ambivalent feelings and cross-cutting relations that belie the representations and structures of colonial rule, this article offers a counter-history to demonstrate how researchers might re-orient themselves toward obscured practices at the margins.