Talking sex, writing the body: Asian ‘literotica’ in the age of risk
Hsu-Ming Teo (Macquarie University)

Wednesday, June 12
16:00
Room 436, 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

The twenty-first century has seen the proliferation of Asian literary erotica – ‘literotica’. Emerging writers publishing in anthologies such as The Best of Singaporean Erotica (2006), Body2Body: A Malaysian Queer Anthology (2009), Love and Lust in Singapore (2010) and The Best of Asian Erotica (2011) now join acclaimed literary novelists such as Yoko Ogawa (The Diving Pool [2008] and Hotel Iris [2010]) in pushing the boundaries of experimental depictions of sexuality within Asian contexts. Much of this material remained marginalised until the publication of E.L. James’s global bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey (2011) which sold over 70 million copies worldwide. In Singapore, Fifty Shades remained on the bestseller list for most of 2012 and, as of May 2013, continues to be the number one selling book in Kinokuniya. Such was the fascination of local readers with Fifty Shades that in 2012, the Singapore Writers Festival dedicated its inaugural fringe festival to the exploration of sexuality in literature and devoted two panels to the discussion of the book, its literary progenitors, and the current crop of Asian literotica. This brought the genre into mainstream awareness and highlighted the risks Singaporean authors ran in contravening censorship laws, particularly with regard to the portrayal of homosexual relationships. Yet literotica is all about risk: the risk of kinky sex, messy body fluids and bad writing; the amelioration of anxiety in an age of economic risk; and the pursuit of pleasure in tension with the risk of intimacy and relationships. This paper considers Asian literotica from two angles. Firstly, as a cultural historian I chart the rise and mainstreaming of literotica in Singapore and what this signifies about the government’s attitude towards the regulation of the sexual lives of its citizens. Secondly, as a novelist, I explore the problems of writing sex; the difficulties of transcribing elegantly the messiness of copulating bodies.