Intersections: But what <i>can</i> ever happen to Queer Theory?: An Introduction to 'Queer Theory and Visual Cultures in Southeast Asia'

1. The title of this special edition of Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific is deceptively succinct. 'Queer Theory and Visual Cultures in Southeast Asia' immediately suggests the filtering of 'regional' or 'local' imagery through whatever can be assumed of Queer Theory as a definable academic enterprise. But queer theory and Southeast Asia semantically share, as discursive constructs would, a lack of consensus over meaning and can beget volatile political urgencies over the shapes they have, can and could take. Or, simply, there are reasons to centrally question the efficacy of these mantles (and therefore will their retirement) and reasons to keep them in view. Some reasons are sketched below as an introduction to this special edition which acknowledges tensions and clashes between while retaining a commitment to the very idea of Queer Theor[ies]. 'Queer Theory' and 'Southeast Asia' could function as theoretically reductive markers but also, as these essays so provocatively point to, ideas, practices and ambitions that have already been written under their names may be explored, extended and re-written or productively engaged or ignored in order to take account of and further the critical vitality of the general interests of these 'areas.' In extreme shorthand, critical considerations of identity; and the region's relationship to ideas of Asia and western-centric worldviews. In this respect the essays here range from the indictment of a transgender stereotype produced in relation to the class privileges of 'gay globality' in Mikee N. Inton's account of the filmic representation of the Philippine bakla to Alicia Izharuddin's examination of relationships between feminism and Queer Theory in order to articulate the meanings of decolonial aesthetics for the constraints that can shape gender, sexuality and ethnicity in Malaysia; to Iola Lenzi's speculations on human rights and civil society for framing queer expression in contemporary art from the region. Many of the key concerns that continue to inform queer theories—agency, essentialism, representation and the conditions of the sayable—are here vitalised in ways that should not be considered of exclusive 'local' interest but rather expanded as newer relationships and understandings are figured.