Hong Kong’s Paper Cities: Heterotopia and the Semiotic Landscape of Civil Disobedience

Transgression in institutional space: Heteroglossic political signs in a Hong Kong university

“…Linguistic and semiotic landscape research (e.g., Jaworski & Thurlow, 2010; Peck et al., 2018; Shohamy & Gorter, 2009) has examined some more “radical” forms of transgression which tend to have more significant material and spatial effects/consequences (e.g., Anfinson, 2020; Karlander, 2018; Lou & Jaworski, 2016; Martin‐Rojo, 2014; Milani, 2015). Like Cresswell (1996), some studies in this research tradition (e.g., Blommaert, 2016; Karlander, 2018; Pennycook, 2010b) have examined urban graffiti which “can only be transgressive if one privileges the hegemonic [semiotic and spatial] order as the ‘legitimate’ order” (Jaworski & Thurlow, 2010, p. 22).…”

“…They observe that the semiotic regimentation of graffiti (Karlander, 2018) in many urban public spaces, including the essentialized out‐of‐place nature of this genre and the erasing actions it often triggers, results from forceful protections of powerful ideological systems and social order governing the space in question. Another widely examined kind of transgressive semiotics is the semiotic landscapes of political protests (e.g., Anfinson, 2020; Lou & Jaworski, 2016; Martin‐Rojo, 2014; Milani, 2015). Milani (2015) has shown how a group of black sexual minority protestors perform transgression by disruptively inserting their bodies into a Pride parade passing through a middle‐class, white neighborhood in South Africa.…”

“…Milani (2015) has shown how a group of black sexual minority protestors perform transgression by disruptively inserting their bodies into a Pride parade passing through a middle‐class, white neighborhood in South Africa. As a globally influential genre of protests, the Occupy movements achieved dramatic political transgression through a transient but massive deterritorialization and reterritorialization (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980) of urban public space (e.g., Anfinson, 2020; Lou & Jaworski, 2016; Martin‐Rojo, 2014). In this transgressive process, the protestors display and circulate myriad “signs out of place,” including (temporary) texts, images, artefacts, facilities and (moving) bodies, in state‐regulated public spaces from which these semiotic elements are excluded in normative social conditions.…”

“…In this transgressive process, the protestors display and circulate myriad “signs out of place,” including (temporary) texts, images, artefacts, facilities and (moving) bodies, in state‐regulated public spaces from which these semiotic elements are excluded in normative social conditions. In so doing, albeit temporarily, the protestors can “reclaim(ed) spaces from the hegemonic grip of the state” (Lou & Jaworski, 2016, p. 639) and conjure an alternative world they wish to dwell in (Martin‐Rojo, 2014; Anfinson, 2020). Such political protests clearly (also) enact a carnivalesque type of transgression: they discursively subvert stabilized political relationships, cultural norms, and social order in material spaces in dramatic but fleeting manners, creating a transient “utopian realm of community, freedom, equality, and abundance” (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 9).…”

“…As a result, many student activists from local universities have participated in various post‐1997 civil political movements/campaigns against the Hong Kong SAR government which many believed have taken several major political decisions under the will of the central Chinese government. One most influential movement of this kind was the Umbrella Movement, a 79‐day mass civil disobedience campaign based on the occupation of several busy street areas in the autumn of 2014 (Anfinson, 2020; Lou & Jaworski, 2016). The movement started as the campaign of Occupy Central with Peace and Love (OCPL) which was cofounded by two local university professors (one of them being a Law professor from HKU) and one reverend to protest a constrained universal suffrage plan codecided by the Hong Kong government and the National People's Congress of People's Republic of China.…”