Tricia Abigail Santos, Fermin

研究ノートThe dynamics of conflict and resistance between subordinate social groups and hegemonic groups has always been a significant issue in the study of subcultures and fan activities. However, in the past decade, this theoretical perspective has been placed under critique by scholars from the social sciences, questioning whether subcultures and fan activities in reality always and necessarily express conflict and resistance towards hegemonic culture. This paper aims to illustrate this theoretical dilemma by examining the case of the yaoi genre and subculture in Japan. As we survey the various academic literature produced and fan accounts documented concerning the yaoi genre and subculture in Japan, we see that it has been often argued mainly through in-depth literary analyses of yaoi works that it serves as a tool and space for the dissenting voices against mainstream conceptions of gender and sexuality in Japan. Scholars and members of the subculture alike locate the beginnings of yaoi within the context of the Second Wave of Feminism in Japan during the 1970s, and constantly discuss how a pioneering group of women manga artists in this era devised the gender-bending conventions now used in this genre in order to reconcile their issues concerning equality among the sexes, the representations of and meaning imbued in the female body, and the nature of desire. However, in the final analysis, several questions still remain unresolved given the current state of knowledge regarding yaoi. This paper will consider these issues and in the end, propose several questions that the researcher will investigate in her future research plans

Osaka University Knowledge Archive

Yaoi : Voices from the Margins

http://ir.library.osaka-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/11094/7429/1/ahs31_215.pdf

Yaoi : Voices from the Margins

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Osaka University Knowledge Archive