ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes the metamorphosis of Hong Kong identity from a sense of belonging to a political will by discussing the frustrations resulting from neoliberal changes and the ensuing affective dynamics. In the post-handover years, the power elites came to address the decline of the Myth of Hong Kong. However, their varied neoliberal projects, premised on ruling out the locals’ political rights and obscuring their political expectations, fail to re-articulate a legitimizing identity. The local people’s rising, though frustrated, political expectations turn into an emotionally charged, yet vaguely defined, identity claim for political autonomy. It figures in two kinds of affective process, a dynamic of “public feelings” about identity and agency. The first one is an urge to govern over one’s way of life, boundaries with the intimate other, and “fate.” The second one is an existential imaginary of life-and-death struggle.
