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Disaffection in a Special Affective Region

Article · December 2021

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Cho-Kiu Li
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2/9/22, 11:23 AM Disaffection in a Special Affective Region | Cho-kiu LI - Critical Asia Archives

【by Cho-kiu LI, Dec. 2021】

When you drop something, don’t find it

When you drop something, don’t be annoyed
When you drop something, don’t be nervous
…perhaps it would reappear in several years’ time

—MC $oho & KidNey: Don’t find what you dropped

The song Don’t find what you dropped (跌嘢唔好搵) has been trending on YouTube in Hong Kong over the
past two months by the end of 2021. The music video was staged in Pak Nai, a suburban wetland in
Northwest Hong Kong opposite to Shenzhen’s skyscrapers. Two YouTubers, $oho and KidNey, are playing
table tennis on the muddy wetland, but they accidentally drop the ball into the swamp. Unable to find the ball,
they remind each other of not searching for it as the sense of powerlessness would harm their mental health.

The song seems to carry two meanings. First, the song is like an energy flow—it is an affective investment by
the cultural creators of the younger generation in Hong Kong during its difficult time. Despite being trapped in
the political and economic depressions, many citizens are working very hard to sustain Hong Kong’s cultural
continuity. It is true that many people, organizations, and stores are disappearing, but new bookstores, new
digital databases, new films, and new YouTube channels emerge as well. Besides $oho and KidNey, new pop
stars such as Mirror, Error, Terence Lam, and Serrini are on the rise, reviving the Cantonese culturalscape.

What drives this essay is the second meaning of the song. The song is cathartic in the sense that it invites its
listeners to be composed in the face of uncontrollable happenings, projecting the restraint of political affect
and the cultivation of a more immune body. We may mourn that the self-repression of political affect is a sign
of self-discipline, a political submission to the government, a retreat from activism to entertainment, or the loss
of the city’s free spirit. Trial and Error, the YouTube channel to which $oho and KidNey belong, was blamed for
being inexpressive in politics. On the other hand, such pacification of feeling also serves to care for the
wounded public, as if public affect was stabilized for the public’s own good. Can citizens’ care of the self, and
the mastery of an affective self, also be a practice of freedom?

Countless reflections were devoted to how the media triggers affective alignment and solidarity over the past
decades, especially in the age of social media and global activism in the early 21st century. However, more
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attention has also been given to the reduction, disruption, concealment, and misattunement of public affect,
covering a wide range of topics including the unsaid or silence (Murray & Durheim, 2019), invisibility (Busch
2019), and secrets (Han, 2015; Dufourmantelle, 2021), all of which are less (or not at all) expressive and
visible, but preserve possibilities through concealment and isolation.

Recently, Xine Yao (2021) proposes that anti-racist politics should rethink what she calls “disaffection”: instead
of top-down control of emotion and the loss of humanity, unfeeling is a tactic of self-creation through
distancing oneself from the culture of sentiment. “Antisocial affects,” Yao reminds us, “are vilified as unfeeling
because they have insurgent potential that may not be legible or instrumentalized towards resistance…we
may consider disaffection to be unfeeling rupture that enables new structures of feeling to arise” (2021: 6).
May we also see Don’t find what you dropped as a disaffecting song, an insurgent potential that may not be
useful towards resistance, but may enable something new to grow?

Hong Kong as an affective region

I think we can answer the above question only through a “radical contextualization” of Hong Kong (Grossberg,
2010). If disaffection appears as a possibility rather than control, it is because the affectivity of its context is
unfavourable to cultural development.

Having been a Special Administrative Region (SAR) in China for two decades, Hong Kong has a public affect
that is often dominated by the rivalry between statism and liberalism—the former asks for the expression of
loyalty (表忠) to the nation and the party, while the latter asks for the expression of a sympathetic stance (表
態) to an anti-state community. We may see the activism in 2019 as a conflict between liberal sympathy and
statist loyalty. After the state tried to crush activism with policing and the national security law, statists show
gratitude to state power, while liberalists mourn the decline of the civil society and activist community. If
disaffection points to a new possibility, then it should be an action that creates a sense of emotional freedom
from statist joy and liberalist despair.

Conflicts between affective liberalism and affective statism might be common worldwide, but it has
significantly defined the affectivity of Hong Kong because of its geopolitical position and unique history. The
city has been a symbol that would trigger nationalist and liberalist affects. To Chinese statist nationalists, the
city, previously colonized by the British, marks the loss of China’s national dignity and sovereignty yet to be
fully revived. Signs that do not fit into the Chinese nationalist imaginary would hurt the nation’s feelings and
trigger national anger. To the liberals, the city serves as an alternative imagination of China and Chineseness.
Liberals tend to simplify changes of the city as symptoms of an external invasion that should be sympathized
with, mourned, and remembered. In view of current China-US conflicts and Covid-19, competitions between
the two affects can be seen in different political, economic, and social events.

Disaffection also appears as distanced from the passionate pursuit of an expressive communitarianism. On
the one hand, Hong Kong’s fervent localism is nurtured with the emergence of social media, mobile media
devices, and activist generations worldwide. They have accelerated the circulation of affective signs, making
instant responses and continuous updates as a major form of cultural and political participation. On the other
hand, we may say that Hong Kong culture has always been driven by an anomalous strive for appearance. As
Ackbar Abbas observed in the 1990s, Hong Kong was a space in radical transition and uncertainty. This
evolving cultural space has been riddled with the tensions between a floating identity and a last-minute search
for a definite collective identity, the strive for autonomy and dependence, and a culture of disappearance
—“whose appearance is posited on the imminence of its disappearance” (Abbas 1997: 7). We may say that
the continuation of the culture of disappearance has fuelled Hong Kong’s cultural heritage movement, civil
society, and activist community.[1] Burnism (攬炒) can be seen as the peak of this culture for appearance:

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rather than short-term speculation of international politics, burnism is a semi-religious act—through self-
sacrifice, a city or community would be recognized and remembered in human history, achieving a sense of
eternity through a spectacular deathstyle. This affective resistance is then responded by the implementation of
an affective law, which provides security to statists and fear to liberal democrats.

Disaffection as a cultivation of plasticity

How can we further understand disaffection? We should not forget that it is not something new. Actions of
hiding and disrupting affect can be found in philosophical and activist discourses.

The Analects proposes that when the Way is found in the world, reveal yourself; when there is no Way, hide
yourself. Many citizens were also well taught how reclusive lives of ancient Chinese intellectuals preserve a
possible way of living in contrast to the brutal struggle for political power. In public discussions on activism,
similar ideas of self-containment and concealment are also shared online. Some participants propose “winning
quietly” questioning the over-exposure of supporters.[2] A young cultural critic argues that the making of a
disappearing demo might be a more sensible tactic in responding to the surveillance state (Shek, 2020).
When activist leaders were arrested, many of them shared their feelings, via media, about their rejection to
collaborate with the state in disseminating fear. In the rest of China, “lying flat” as a tactic to evade “being
reaped” has become popular. These tendencies point to a tradition that believes in the power of hiding the
affective self, as well as the disorientation and disruption of affective power. Clarifying this tradition might lead
us to transcend the simple imagination that visibility always leads to a stronger public and power of resistance.
The disaffected self and disaffecting tactics have their potentialities, too.

I would like to discuss two disaffecting works made by $oho and KidNey. The works seem to point to how
disaffection—as an action that contains, conceals, and deflects affect—might facilitate the cultivation of the
imaginations of community and place—making it more “plastic” in comparison to the former rigidness.[3]

The first work is a song viral on YouTube called Got to Go (係咁先啦), which deflects the unpleasant affect of
migration by reframing it as the end of a party. The lyrics describe a social experience that many citizens have
in common: “I” want to leave the party as “I” dislike leaving too late by bus or by taxi to the remote home in
Tuen Mun (in Western Hong Kong near the airport), but “I” am stopped by friends and relatives in the party.
After a struggle, “I” decide to stay and not ruin the party mood, only to find out soon that nobody really cares
about “my” existence—“my” participation is not as essential as “I” thought, though party participants eagerly
ask “me” to stay in half-hearted empty words.

$oho is leaving the party but stopped by friends

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The song deflects the affective debates on migration after the enactment of the highly affective security law in
Hong Kong. Migration is currently a political topic because “leaving” means more than a personal and family
choice. It also implies the betrayal of a political community long established since the activism in 2019. Unlike
migration, the party is another form of human connectivity. It is more light-hearted as the departure is
impermanent, merely a retreat to one’s private space, and reunion is possible another day—if they want to
meet each other again. Got to Go contains and disrupts the contradictory affect within a centripetal political
community by projecting a daily human relation, in which leaving and staying are simple separations. We may
read this work as facilitation of what Abbas calls “hyphenation.” According to Abbas, there is no hope for Hong
Kong to build a nation, but it would likely be a mutant “hyphenation” that integrates and separates different
paradoxical forces in the changing world. $oho and KidNey reorient departure from grave betrayal to a light
goodbye, loosening a tight-knit community to a plastic network among community members in different parts
of the world.

The disaffection of affect can also be seen in another YouTube video, Iceland-Tan Kwu Lung (冰島灘鼓龍),
which reframes a local beach Lung Kwu Tan (in Tuen Mun) as Iceland. In the story, KidNey and Chi brings
their good friend $oho to Lung Kwu Tan because his mother is ill, but they playfully joke that they are in
Iceland. $oho seems to perform being cheated. He is thankful to his friends and excitingly take photos of
“Iceland,” not without questioning why Chinese characters and Chinese white dolphins appear, which makes
KidNey and Chi burst into laughter. On the beach, $oho receives his brother’s call and learns that his mother
is dying in Tuen Mun Hospital. Awakened by this bad news, KidNey and Chi stopped laughing and ask $oho
to go to the hospital. KidNey and Chi manage to bring $oho to the entrance of Tuen Mun Hospital, but $oho
refuses to admit that they are actually in Hong Kong, even angrily blaming his friends for staging a fake Tuen
Mun Hospital to cheat him. KidNey and Chi look confused, unable to understand why $oho would not rush to
meet his dying mother. The story ends with $oho saying goodbye to KidNey and Chi, telling them that he
would return to the hotel, and urge them not to come back too late, with a confident smile.

We might read the story as merely escapism, avoiding the trauma of the mother’s death by staying in an
imagined Iceland. I think it also relates to how a suffering subject masters his own negative affect in a
sublation process—fully aware that his mother will die, $oho chooses to continue enjoying the place and his
vacation with friends. What enables this disaffected subject to do so is the reimagination of the local as a
foreign place. It is not new that many Hong Kong locals feel like strangers in their hometown.[4] But unlike
passive strangers, $oho chooses to see Tuen Mun’s beach as an enjoyable Iceland, exploring old places with
newfound curiosity instead of coming to terms with a corpse. It is a disaffecting choice, a rejection to be—
predictably—victimized, but choosing to be a composed visitor and explorer of one’s hometown.

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$oho’s post-traumatic composure

Whether and how this disaffecting tradition and tactics would be rebuilt and repressed in post-liberal Hong
Kong remains unknown. What is certain is that $oho, KidNey, and their friends in the YouTube channel Trial
and Error are trying to create their own stories. Trial and Error’s core members grew up in Tuen Mun—it has a
beautiful Green Hill with a Buddhist Monastery for the monk Pui To. It would be far-fetched to say that
disaffection is merely a variation of Buddhism and its equanimity, but it makes sense to say that besides the
conventional and mythological hybrid cosmopolitanism (under the Victoria Peak) and refugee
communitarianism (under the Lion Rock), something new is happening.

AUTHOR
Cho-kiu Li, Hang Seng University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

NOTES

[1] Pang (2020) argues that the determination for political appearance in 21st century Hong Kong differs from
the ambiguous appearance of cultural identity Abbas observed in the late 20th century.

[2] The affective politics during the activism can also be seen when a public intellectual leader Leung Man Tao
was criticized by the younger intellectuals Yim Suk@Corrupt the Youth as showing no sympathy to the
activists because he believed that one should control emotion and learn to be numbed in the face of
authoritarian rule. Leung was also criticized by other key opinion leader The Atheist’s Babel Tower.
See Initium’s video

[3] I borrow the idea of “plasticity” from Catherine Malabou. In explaining how “plasticity” affected her, Malabou
mentioned that it “[opened] a dialogue between continental philosophy in its European form and new modes of
philosophizing coming from non-Western cultures. This is the first strong plastic influence on my spirit, which
is to delocalize my universe from the West to somewhere else.” See What Should we do with Plasticity? An
Interview with Catherine Malabou

[4] This stranger and tourist mentality could be found in the lyrics of my little airport’s song My Beautiful New
Hong Kong (美麗新香港) This Hong Kong is no longer my turf / Just try to think I am travelling elsewhere…

REFERENCES

Abbas, M. A. Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1997.

Busch, Akiko. How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency. New York: Penguin Books,
2020.

Dufourmantelle, Anne, and Lindsay Turner. In Defense of Secrets. Fordham University Press, 2021.

Grossberg, Lawrence. Cultural Studies in the Future Tense. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.

Han, Byung-Chul, and Erik Butler. The Transparency Society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015.

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View publication stats

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Malabou, Catherine. What Should we Do with our Brain? Fordham University Press, 2008.

Murray, Amy Jo, and Kevin Durrheim, eds. Qualitative Studies of Silence: The Unsaid as Social Action.
Cambridge University Press, 2021.

Pang, Laikwan. The Appearing Demos: Hong Kong during and after the Umbrella Movement. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2020.

Shek, Ki Chau. Is the Appearing Demos Adequate? – A commentary on Appearing Demos. Zihua, 2020. Yao,
Xine. Disaffected: The Cultural Politics of Unfeeling in Nineteenth-Century America. Durham: Duke University
Press, 2021.

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