Dualistic thinking perm eates discourses around intimate relationships betw een people w ho are culturally and racially different. T he m obilisation o f the term cross-cultural relationship, used to refer to sexual/rom antic relationships betw een culturally (and usually implicitly also racially) different partners, is often underpinned by binary concepts such as ric h /p o o r, em otionally m anipulative/em otionally naive, First W o rld /T h ird W orld, legitimate relationship/illegitim ate relationship, non-com m ercial sex/com m ercial sex, m an /w o m a n , and so on. Such concepts rely u p o n being able to fix the identities o f the people being represented and the pow er relations betw een them.
Tins chapter sets out to challenge the fixity o f these dualisms by m obilising two key argum ents. T h e first is th at the identities o f the m en and w o m en engaging in intim ate relationships that cross cultural, econom ic and racial axes o f difference are tem porally and spatially specific. It therefore follows that the pow er relations betw een intim ate partners in such relationships can potentially shift and change as they m ove through different sites and contexts. T he second argum ent is th at these relationships often open up new possibilities for the m en and w om en w ho participate in them that reach beyond the im m ediate success or failure o f the individual relationship.1 These new possibilities can take a num ber o f form s, som e o f w hich will be outlined in the body o f this chapter.
As discussed in chapter two, 'Representing Tourism Encounters, academ ic analysis o f intim ate relationships betw een m en from places configured as o ut o f the way and tourist w om en from places configured as central has tended to focus on econom ic and racial difference and cited dissonance in com m unication and negotiation across these
Even given the variation in ways that success and failure are conceptualised.
axis o f difference as evidence for the ‘failure’ and impossibility o f these relationships (see Bow m an, 1989, D ahles and Bras, 1999, H erold, Garcia and D eM oya, 2001, Lette, 1996, Phillips, 2002, Pruitt and LaFont, 1995, Sanchez Taylor, 2001, Zinovieff, 1991). M easuring the ultimate success or failure (legitimacy or illegitimacy) o f these relationships against an assum ed ‘norm al’ heterosexual relationship, the possibilities that are opened up by these relationships are often ignored in the existing literature.2
Stepping outside o f binary frames o f analysis around the negotiation o f difference I am seeking to open up the n u m b er o f possibilities for com m unicating across difference. T hese form s o f com m unication may vary from encounters betw een individual people, to encounters betw een people and cultural milieus. D iscourses that highlight the im possibilities o f cross-cultural connection privilege differential pow er and identity as defining constructs that determ ine the possible outcom es o f interactions. T hrough this privileging, such discourses perpetuate the re-perform ance o f differentiation because
difference is positioned as the lens through w hich we understand cross-cultural encounters. In this chapter, I ask w hat m ight be o pened up by way o f possibilities if an interpretive fram e that did n o t seek to m easure cross-cultural encounters against pre-set notions o f success, m orality and pow er was m obilised.
T he conceptual tools for undertaking an analysis o f intim ate relationships that cross racial, cultural and econom ic difference and sits outside o f binary identity categories can be found within a variety o f texts that pay attention to the im portance o f spatiality in the perform ance o f identity (Askew, 2002, M anderson, 1992, Plum m er, 1995). These authors have draw n attention to the im portance o f space and context to the enactm ent o f subjectivity. F o r Askew (2002), this m eans conceptualising the construction o f sex w o rk er’s identities as taking place through a series o f cross-cutting locations in which different aspects o f the self vary. F o r M anderson, the im portance o f T hai cultural perspectives is fore-grounded in offering an alternative reading o f the m eanings that can be interpreted from the spatial configuration o f bodies in P atpong sex perform ances. F o r Plum m er (1995: 27-28), the enactm ent o f certain identities and the telling o f certain (sexual) stories are tem porally and spatially specific.
2 Even given the diversity of ways that a ‘normal’ heterosexual relationship can be defined, relationships that cross racial, cultural and economic difference are still often positioned as abject or illegitimate.
A spatialised analysis o f the enactm ent o f sexual and non-sexual identities involves tracing everyday interactions and making visible the processes w hereby shifts betw een different spaces elicit very different subject positions. In K oh Pha-ngan, identity is negotiated in different m aterial spaces around a n u m ber o f issues: bodily d epo rtm ent and dress, sexual practices, practices around co nsum ption o f drugs and alcohol, and practices around displays o f physical intimacy in public spaces. In tracing the trajectories o f subjectivities as they shift through space and coalesce around different nexus o f pow er, I argue for a m ove beyond the dualistic representations seen in the academic literature that effectively contain relationships and the identities and those in them in static ways (see for example: Bow m an, 1989, D ahles and Bras, 1999, H erold, Garcia and DeM oya, 2001, Phillips, 2002).
This chapter is structured in two broad sections. T he first outlines the geographic theory that I draw up on to undertake my analysis o f the ethnographic material presented in the second section o f the chapter. T he second section presents ethnographic accounts o f four intim ate relationships. In this section I m ake two argum ents: first, that the pow er relations betw een the intim ate partners are spatially and tem porally contingent and second, that the relationships enable new possibilities that exceed the imm ediate im plications o f the intim ate encounters.