Research
Research
Narcissistic Gender: social formation of the gendered body
In my dissertation, I ask how one comes to be of one gender or not in this society where only two genders are considered legible, even announced before one’s birth. Using Freud’s concept of the ego and narcissism, I propose a more robust, dynamic, and social understanding of the self. Using phenomenology, I argue that our body forms and learns habits of sensations, which underlies our world so deeply that we take these habits to be natural and indisputable facts of our bodies. With these new understandings, I argue that we should see transgender identity not as a pathology or a cause of individual suffering, but as similarly structured as cisgender identity while revealing the social formation of cisgender identity itself. My dissertation brings a new and original reading of selfhood in psychoanalytical philosophy to enrich the understanding of identity. I address the recent feminist debate on identity by redirecting the question from epistemology of facts to the ontological dignity of individual’s existence and dynamic formation.
“Silent Rage: Queer Youth Self-harm as A Protest”
Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Volume 33, Number 3, 2019 pp. 422-433.
“Young Activists, New Movements: Contemporary Chinese Queer Feminism and Transnational Genealogies” (Co-written with Liu, Wen and Ana Huang)
Feminism & Psychology 2015, Vol.25 (I) 11-17.
Book review for Gayle Salamon’s The Life and Death of Latisha King: A Critical Phenomenology of Transphobia
American Philosophical Association Newsletter on LGBTQ Issues in Philosophy 19(1), 2019.
Book review for Johanna Oksala’s Feminist Experiences: Foucauldian and Phenomenological Investigations
American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy, Fall 2017.
For a list of conference presentations, see my Curriculum Vitae.