The University of Pittsburgh's Asian Studies Center will present Dr. Kun Qian and her talk "Platformativity of Desire: Wanghong and Chinese Entertainment Livestreaming" on March 4, part of the Asia Pop lecture series.
Live streaming has reshaped social relations, cultural production, and daily life—especially in China, where the industry surpasses Western counterparts in scale, genre diversity, and revenue. This lecture examines labor relations in China’s entertainment live streaming sector, arguing that state authorities and private platforms jointly regulate desire for political control and profit.
Through Hao Wu’s People’s Republic of Desire (2018), it shows how physical and affective labor become emotional commodities circulating across platforms. Drawing on Jean-François Lyotard’s “libidinal economy” and Thomas Lamarre’s “platformativity,” it argues that platforms fuse the political, economic, and psychic to sustain a “tittytainment” economy that masks exploitation.
It runs from 6:00 to 7:00 pm in 205 David Lawrence Hall (map).
