Ambivalent affective labor: The datafication of qing and danmei writers in the cultural industry

Abstract

Danmei culture, a Chinese literary genre that foregrounds male–male romances and/or erotica, has received significant attention in academia. Studies have investigated how it enables women to resist heteronormativity or forms the escapist route for women to express their desires. Danmei culture has evolved into a transmedia landscape and cultural industry, exploited by the logic of capital. However, to date, danmei writers have not been considered as affective laborers living with precariousness in the cultural industry. Drawing on data from interviews with danmei writers foregrounding the datafication of qing (affects and desires), this article examines the writers’ ambivalent affective labor. The findings illustrate the emergence of an increasingly formulaic writing: by searching, selecting, appropriating, and combining elements from the qing database, danmei writers generate a male homoerotic love story that invokes readers’ affects and desires for better monetization. Pleasure and pain mingle, consolidating the precariousness of the labor. However, affects and desires cannot be fully manipulated, for qing embodies transformative momentum.