Postmodernism and Hong Kong Cinema

The Economics of Empire:, 2020

Hong Kong is unique in its deconstruction of many of the narratives of colonialism and postcolonialism. Unlike other former colonies, this region prepared relatively peacefully over a twenty-year period for its Handover and was the last colony of the Empire given up in the twentieth century. The official Chinese Communist Party narrative on Hong Kong does not accept that it was ever a colony and yet for Anglophone postcolonial scholars its coloniality is clear, even if under-studied. Hong Kong is a territory that on a number of levels helpfully uncovers oversights in postcolonial thinking. This chapter examines how the very real threat of Chinese recolonization ushered in a postcolonial nostalgia in Hong Kong whereby informal imperialist practices in administration and education have lived on long after British colonialism as Chinese recolonization settled in. However, it is by looking at the economic and institutional history of the region that the important nature of colonial history becomes clear. Recent research reveals how Hong Kong served as testing ground for economic practices that would lead to the multinational capitalism of the late twentieth century and, in turn, its academic capitalism. The chapter concludes by looking at the economic origins of the University of Hong Kong, which British colonial authorities regarded as an "imperial asset." The current political crisis in Hong Kong has unleashed a wide range of political narratives as academics scramble not only to chart how the dramatic shift to violence on both sides emerged but how events will play out. The roots of the crisis-"the revolution of our times"-call for an examination of the revolutionary subject, decolonisation, recolonization and subjugation, the nature of totalitarianism and its ownership of the media, theories of assembly, and class politics. However, this paper will focus on how postcolonial theory has been applied to Hong Kong and how state capitalism and western capitalism have very often exploited the notion of Hong Kong as "Pearl of the Orient" and of Hong Kong people to the extent that postcolonial theory never seems able to deal with the realpolitik of Hong Kong. As Mirana May Szeto writes in 2006 after another less violent period of protest:

2000

diany~ng zai Zhongguo d~anying shi shang de diwei" (Xie Jin's films in the history of Chinese cinema), Dianying yishu (Cinema art) 2 (1990): 9.

New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, 2013

Deepening integration of Hong Kong’s commercial film production with Mainland China and the apparently inevitable marginalization of local-content films in the last ten years or so call for closer attention to the role and significance of independent films. As a critical art form, independent cinema in Hong Kong constitutes an alternative cultural space where artistic experimentation and sociopolitical critique generally avoided in mainstream productions are still actively pursued. Drawing upon recent writings on the Hong Kong independent film scene, this article explores the way in which independent films critically engage with the double hegemony of the national and the colonial in the postcolonial present. It argues that coloniality in Hong Kong is the result of the dual processes of British colonialism and decolonization in the name of ‘one country, two systems’, which effectively brings together the utilitarian aspirations and institutional excesses of colonial capitalism and socialist capitalism. Against this background, selected works by film-makers at different stages of their creative careers will be examined to shed light on the way in which decolonial visual thinking operates in the film text to intervene in the colonial/national discourse of history and identity in the post-handover era.

Portes: Revista mexicana de estudios sobre la Cuenca del Pacífico, 2018

The aim of this article is to analyse to what extent demands for democracy apropos of the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong are the result of postcolonial determinations. We suggest that this is part of social discourses founded on narratives of cultural difference, portraying a distinctive Hong Kong’s identity in contrast to Mainland China. Even though we recognise the influence of networked transnational movements in this movement, we establish that there is a postcolonial strategic essentialism guiding the demands for participatory democracy in Hong Kong. This article is organised in three sections. First, we present the Umbrella Revolution characteristics, organisation, and demands. In the second part, we introduce a theoretical analysis about the existence of a certain social imaginary emanated from the island’s post-colonial condition. In the third section, we elaborate about collective actions in the light of the New Social Movements theory. Finally, we conclude by highlightin...

Many postmodern theorists claim we have entered a new time in which post-Fordist and neoliberal forms of governance create subjects with distinctly new social relations. Others like Stuart Hall situate the emergence of postmodern subjectivities within modernism, arguing that postmodernism signifies a continuation of modernism and not a decisive break. Rather than engaging a materialist analysis investigating the difference between these two positions, I would like to consider how postmodernism operates as a concept to produce ideological effects within a particular web of power relations. To that end, the ideological contest over postmodernism’s meaning in the United States and China will serve as an illustrative example through which I hope to contemplate Hall’s views on the politics of representing postmodernism. Overall, I hope to consider what is at stake in declaring postmodernism as a distinct historical phase. By considering postmodernism’s discursive function in relation to the material and ideological realities of China as opposed to the United States, I also hope to deconstruct the notion that postmodernism is singularly defined as a new global epoch shaped by and benefiting Western interests. Instead, I will situate postmodernity as an ideological term contested by alternate modernities vying for control of the future.

The 70's Biweekly Social Activism and Alternative Cultural Production in 1970s Hong Kong, 2023

During the Long Seventies (1969-1982), the New Left in Hong Kong was heavily influenced by the Global Sixties. It was not, however, a mere extension of that social phenomenon. The contexts of Asia’s Cold War, de-colonization, and Chinese nationalism and socialism must be considered. Based on case studies of the significant New Left collective, The 70s Bi-weekly (The 70s), this article proposes that although the collective did not explicitly articulate the political imaginary of Asia. Hong Kong was embroiled in the Asian political arena and the collective’s world consciousness was compelled to react to it. Moreover, this article argues that the political identity of Hong Kong’s New Left was an ideological hybrid. It incorporated dimensions of Asia, the Third World and global movements. While local issues and national identity were sometimes at stake, this article brings attention to the interplay between the global, regional and local politics. By employing the analytic lens of “Asia as method” (Chen 2010), this article, on the one hand, highlights the geopolitics of the Cold War and the de-colonization movement across Asia and the Third World. On the other hand, it sheds light on the specificities of colonial Hong Kong in Asia. The term “world consciousness” indicates the multiple strands of universal humanitarianism, internationalism, and Third Worldism. In this light, this article aims to contribute to scholarship on Hong Kong identity politics that focus excessively on Britain and China, the literature of Asia’s Cold War in the Long Seventies, and the critical area studies. By providing an overview of The 70s’ Third Worldism and tracing its discourse on the Anti-Vietnam War Movement 反越戰運動 (1970-73) and the Baodiao Movement 保釣運動 (also known as the Defend Diaoyutai Movement, 1971-72), this essay explores the trans-regional political imaginary and the concept of “Asia” in The 70s. This essay also revisits the collectives’ review and adjustment of its world consciousness as the movement progressed, which led to multiple and complex pathways in examining international politics.

Global-E, 2018

[T]he idea of freedom in supposedly "postcolonial" Hong Kong is still very much colonial and objectified—it is often talked about as something granted by the old master, then inherited or ruined by the new master.... If freedom is really a "universal value," it has to be "re-articulable" for all sorts of people to re-experience, re-imagine, and re-shape their status quos—or else it will be no more than grandiose yet hollow rhetoric.