| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Leftist movements of the mid-twentieth century have a well earned reputation for sexual conservatism. However, these movements were not of a simplistic reactionary type, but rather were embedded in sexualized contexts that functioned through the displacement of individual sexual desire. Following from the work of Ka F. Wong and his Lacanian analysis of the way displaced sexuality functioned in the experience of participants in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, this paper applies Lacan's concepts of repressed libidinal energy to analyse the sexual politics of the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) from the 1970s to the early 1980s. The CPT promoted personal sexual discipline as a moral alternative to the purported sexual licentiousness and moral bankruptcy of their right-wing opponents. The paper, moreover, argues that party discipline, particularly regarding gender and sexuality, was not necessarily experienced as an annoyance or deprivation, but rather was recounted by participants as liberating, necessary, and even spiritual.
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