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วรรณกรรมกับสิทธิมนุษยชนศึกษา 219

ABSTRACT

Chutima Pragatwutisarn

“Queer” is a term used to call those who do not fit in the norms prescribed by a

heteronormative society. Those people who are stigmatized as queer are not limited to
gays and lesbians but include people with disability, people with AIDS/HIV, and old people.
Queer theorists, influenced by gay and lesbian studies, criticize the norms that the

dominant society uses to distinguish between the normal and the abnormal. This article
seeks to bring queer theories to bear in the discussion of old age in Koynuch’s novella
Used People. The analysis will show how the capitalist heteronormative society constructs

the meaning of old age and how those people affected by dominant ideologies of age
engage with the politics of shame, also used in GLB movement, to redefine the meaning of
old age.

Natthanai Prasannam

This article aims at studying sexual minorities in Weerawat Kanoknukroah’s Trilogy:

Sak Dok Mai (The Remains of the Flower), Dai See Muang (The Purple Life), and Huang Jam
Laeng (Bareback in Bangkok), written during 1995-2008, the period of socio-economic
changes and queer social movements. The study reveals that the trilogy can be read as
“queer texts”. The author represents gay sexualities as sexual minorities associated with

their class. The politics of promiscuity is utilized to assert gay identity and politically convey
queer subversive spirits by means of cruising culture, sexual desire, and fluidity of

sexualities. These challenge and destabilize heteronormativity. Buddhist discourse also
juxtaposes with queer subversive spirits to identify the “conventional truth” of human
existence. The author proposes a novel alternative for identity politics in terms of dissolved
identity. He also addresses to his reading community that sufferings are collective

possessions of humankind beyond sexual borders. Humankind must face sufferings and
they could learn to overcome them. The contest among discourses discloses Thai gay

identity as multiple, ironic, and socially absorbed mosaic.