The Performative Force of Cultural Products - Subject Positions and Desires Emerging From Engagement With the Manga Boys’Love and Yaoi

Aug 20, 2026

This article examines the performative power of cultural products as they circulate globally. Focusing on the Japanese manga genres Boys’ Love and Yaoi, it analyzes how readership outside Japan contributes to an image of Japan as “more than Japan.” Drawing on hyperreality and feminist elaborations on materiality, the study investigates which representations of Japan and Sweden are produced, what subject positions and desires emerge among Swedish followers, and how embodied engagement challenges hyperreality as a mere surface effect.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages22

Reading Time55 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Manga and the ‘Cool Japan’

Theoretical Concepts: Hyperreality, Materiality, and Cultural Products

Methods and Materials

Analysis: Imaginations, Japaneseness/Swedishness, and Desires

Conclusions and Further Research

The Performative Force of Cultural Products Subject Positions and Desires Emerging From Engagement with the Manga Boys’Love and Yaoi By Mona Lilja & Cathrin Wasshede Abstract This article deals with questions about the performative power of cultural products that travel the world. The Japanese manga genre Boys’ Love and Yaoi has gained a broad readership outside of Japan during recent decades. This has cultivated an image of Japan as sexually radical and ‘as more than Japan’, something which has produced alternative subject positions and practises regarding gender and sexuality among Swedish Boys’ Love/Yaoi followers. With the help of the concept hyperreality and elaborations on materiality within feminist theories, this article discusses: Which images of Japan and Sweden are produced as manga Boys’Love/Yaoi – as cultural products – travel from Japan to Sweden? Which subject positions and forms of desires emerge? In order to understand how cultural products create new subjectivities, images and desires, we also ask: What can a sharper focus on materiality and the agency of matter add to the understanding of the concept of hyperreality and the construction of new realities? We argue that embodied experiences of certain subject positions and desires challenge the idea of the hyperreal as a surface phenomenon. Further, the article shows how the image of “Japan” is often coloured by the desires that West cultivates about the ‘other’. Keywords: Cultural products, Manga/Boys’ Love/Yaoi, Subject positions, Desires, Hyperreality, Materiality Lilja, Mona & Cathrin Wasshede: ”The Performative Force of Cultural Products: Subject Positions and Desires Emerging From Engagement with the Manga Boys’Love and Yaoi ”, Culture Unbound, Volume 8, issue 3, 2016: 284–305. Published by Linköping University Electronic Press: [http://www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se](http://www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se) Culture Unbound Journal of Current Cultural Research Introduction The Japanese manga genres Boys’ Love (to be known from now on in this article as BL) and Yaoi are visual or text-based fiction where the storylines revolve around love relationships between beautiful boys. BL and Yaoi are umbrella terms that are often used interchangeably and are referred to as the couplet BL/Yaoi in this article. During recent decades the BL/Yaoi has gained a broad and enthusiastic readership outside of Japan, something which seems to cultivate an image of Japan ‘as more than Japan’. BL/Yaoi’s connection to homosexuality, gender bending and sexual desires (e.g. Kinsella 1998; Levi et al. 2010; McLelland et al. 2015) has produced images of Japan as ultra-modern, exotic and sexually free (cf. Morley & Robins 1995; Tsai 2016), as well as resulted in performances of alternative queer subject positions and sexual practices. All together, this made us interested in questions about representations of reality and the performative power of cultural products. The texts and pictures about young men in love and having sex with each other in the manga BL/Yaoi are cultural products with performative power, i.e. they do things. Cultural products are material and symbolic products encountered in all strata and sections of society; for example in the form of art, clothing, music, dance, symbols and rituals (e.g. Hall 1980, 1996; Edgar & Sedgwick 2008; Craig 2013). With the help of the concept of hyperreality and elaborations on materiality within feminist theories, as well as interviews with eight Swedish, female manga followers, this article discusses: Which images of Japan and Sweden are produced as manga Boys’ Love/Yaoi – as cultural products – travel from Japan to Sweden? Which subject positions and forms of desires emerge? Departing from theorisations of the material within feminism (e.g. Haraway 1991; Franklin 2003; Alaimo & Hekman 2008; Ahmed 2008) we also aim to elaborate on the concept of hyperreality. Jean Baudrillard’s theories about hyperreality are intere

FAQs

How does the article explain the performative power of manga Boys’ Love and Yaoi?

It treats the texts and pictures as cultural products that do things through how followers interact with and relate to them in everyday contexts.

What images of Japan and Sweden are produced as manga BL/Yaoi travels to Sweden?

The article argues that manga circulation shapes “Japan” and “Sweden” through the desires and fantasies cultivated in the West, producing Japan as more than Japan.

Why does the article bring in materiality and the agency of matter to study hyperreality?

It argues that a focus on materiality shows how embodied experiences of subject positions and desires make hyperreal worlds feel real, challenging hyperreality as only a surface phenomenon.

Aug 20, 2026

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