Affective Spaces

Explores how affect and emotion create new ways of understanding contemporary cultural politics in China The growing political conflicts unfolding in China provide an opportunity to rethink the cultural politics of emotion. Although the political formations in the region are laden with a multitude of emotions, they tend to be poorly understood. This book explains why affect and emotion matter in politics from the Mao Zedong to the Xi Jinping era. It makes a unique contribution by investigating the dynamics of political passions and the contexts from which emotional subjects engage in hegemonic struggles through the creation of various cultural forms, including Maoist art and popular films. Topics discussed include the mobilisation of revolutionary emotions in political movements, the desire of nationalism, the virtual affective space created by antagonistic identity politics, the subaltern body as a surface of emotion work, and the blurring of public-private divides on social media. Liu and Shi find that cultural feelings and emotional experiences are crucial for understanding political struggle, as well as debates about the cultural dilemma of the Chinese Dream. Shih-Diing Liu is Professor of Communication at the University of Macau, China. Wei Shi is Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Macau, China.