Diaosi as infrapolitics: scatological tropes, identity-making and cultural intimacy on China's Internet

作者：Yang Peidong^*; Tang Lijun; Wang Xuan

来源：Media Culture & Society, 2015, 37(2): 197-214.

DOI：10.1177/0163443714557980

• China
• cultural intimacy
• diaosi
• identity-making
• Internet culture

This article examines a recent bizarre phenomenon on China's Internet - the enormous popularity of a scatological Chinese neologism called diaosi, which literally translates as dick string'. Seeing the diaosi phenomenon as a case of infrapolitics', a space of nuanced discursive practices mediating overt online politics and benign online entertainment, we analyse the ways in which an infrapolitical practice such as the diaosi phenomenon fuses political critique, cultural processes of identity construction and meaning-making as well as cyber ritual communion. Specifically, we interpret the infrapolitics of diaosi as simultaneously an instantiation of a prevalent scatological online culture that defies hypernormalization, a collective identity-making that seeks to create critical social solidarity and a practice and politics of cultural intimacy.

• 出版日期2015-3
• 单位南阳理工学院