Ge, Liang;
(2025)
Ambivalent Affective Labour, Datafication of Qing and Danmei Writers in the Cultural Industry.
In:
Proceedings of the 25th Annual Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers.
(pp. pp. 1-4).
AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
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Abstract
Danmei 耽美 culture, which features male-male romance and/or erotica, emerged in mainland China in the late 1990s and has been flourishing since the 2010s across East and Southeast Asia. The dynamic Chinese danmei culture has received significant attention in academia in recent years, either by mapping out the resistant potential against the heteronormativity or by highlighting the escapist route for expressing the women participants’ desires. The danmei culture has evolved into a transmedia landscape, and at the same time, an ever-expanding cultural industry being exploited by the logic of capital. Danmei writers as affective labors living in such a cultural industry have been rarely considered in present danmei studies. Through exploring the datafication of qing (情, affects and desires) via in-depth interviews with contracted danmei writers on Jinjiang, I examine the distinct feature of danmei writers as ambivalent affective labor. For danmei writers, the datafication and monetization of qing leads to increasingly formulaic writing. By selecting, appropriating and combing the elements in the database of qing, danmei writers are able to swiftly generate a male homoerotic love story that efficiently and effectively invoke the affects and desires of readers for better monetization. Pleasures and pains are both involved in doing the ambivalent affective labor, which further consolidates the precariousness of the affective labour. However, the affects and desires per se cannot be fully manipulated – transformative momentum is embedded in the water-like qing all the time.
| Type: | Proceedings paper |
|---|---|
| Title: | Ambivalent Affective Labour, Datafication of Qing and Danmei Writers in the Cultural Industry |
| Event: | The 25th Annual Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.5210/spir.v2024i0.13944 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2024i0.13944 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the version of record. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | Affective Labor, Datafication, Qing, Danmei Writer, Precariousness, Subjectivity |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Social Research Institute |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10204396 |
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