Insurgent African Intimacies in Pandemic Times: Deimperial Queer Logics of China's New Global Family in Wolf Warrior 2

ABSTRACT

The Wolf Warrior is a gorgeous, muscled, Chinese male rogue soldier in exile who adventures through the archipelago of the prc's shipping, mining, and medical projects across the Global South to battle white mercenaries, corrupt Asian businessmen, and local pirates - all while saving Africa from a ravaging pandemic. Paradoxically, it also enacts a horizontalist, nonbiological family network mobilized by an anti-imperialist vision - a kind of bonding achieved not through marriage and childrearing, but through adoptive intimacies as well as trans-generational and "mixed race" friendships and empathies. The latter are described by Chunyu Zhang as practices through which queer female and non-binary fans turn "a voyeuristic gaze upon men . . . [which] allows fans to play with patriarchal gender constructions, provides escapism, and creates aesthetics that offer an alternative to clichéd heterosexual romantic storytelling. "8 This deconstructive Danmei/BL/Slash method aims to excavate a utopian vision of feminist South-South solidarity via imaginaries of transracial adoption and militant intimacy, map queer possibilities for China-Africa cooperation via alternative orderings of a "global family," and identify contradictory agendas for insurgent anti-imperialism via racialized homoeroticisms involving rogue Asian soldiers both wrestling and disidentifying with white mercenaries as well as Black pirates.