Martin Manalansan observed in 2007 that we need to "queer" the chain of careby which he meant transnational care work economies that naturalize and undervalue the labors of women of color. Not only women are subject to transnational care work economies. But what are the implications of this observation? What forms of racialized gendering enable all kinds of bodies to perform queered affective labors? What gendered, sexual and racialized social relations are t! aking shape through such affective labour practices? This paper reads practices of gender nonconforming care work in Thai gender reassignment clinics and in the film Paper Dolls against theories of orientalism and self-orientalism, affective labour and biopolitical subjectivity, to provoke affective labor theory to queer itself.

External Link »