Under bright lights : gay Manila and the global scene / Bobby Benedicto.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Benedicto, Bobby, 1982- author.

Series:

Difference incorporated

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Gay men--Philippines--Manila.

Gay men.

Male homosexuality--Philippines--Manila.

Male homosexuality.

Gay community--Philippines--Manila.

Gay community.

Gay business enterprises--Philippines--Manila.

Gay business enterprises.

Philippines--Manila.

Physical Description:

xx, 213 pages ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2014]

Summary:

Gay-friendly dance clubs, upmarket bars, and party circuits-such commercial venues evoke the image of a gay globe, but what happens when they are bound to a landscape of disorder, mass poverty, and urban decay? Vividly describing this world of contradictions through the prism of twenty-first-century Manila, Under Bright Lights challenges popular interpretations of the "third world queer" as a necessarily radical figure. Bobby Benedicto paints a remarkably counterintuitive portrait of gay spaces in postcolonial cities. He argues that Filipino gay men's pursuit of an elusive global gay modernity sustains the very class, gender, and racial hierarchies that structure urban life in the Philippines. Benedicto examines, for example, how practices such as driving enable the emergence of a classed gay cityscape, and how scenes of networked global cities engender discourse that positions Manila within a global system of "gay capitals." And yet he also analyzes how the fantasy of gay globality is imperiled when privileged gay men from Manila, while traveling abroad, encounter Filipino labor migrants and come face-to-face with the exclusionary racial orders that operate in gay spaces overseas. Unique in its methodological approach, Under Bright Lights employs affective, first-person storytelling techniques to capture the visceral experience of Manila and gay life in a third world city. Book jacket.

Contents:

Prologue : city of contradictions

Introduction : making a scene

Automobility and the gay cityscape

Elsewhere, between Palawan and the global city

The specter of kabaklaan

Transnational transit and the circuits of privilege

White noise and the shock of racial shame

Coda : nowhere to go.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780816691074

081669107X

9780816691081

0816691088

OCLC:

871186873