The cyberpolitics of the governed

Internet, “Rivers and Lakes”: Locating Chinese Alternative Public Sphere

“…To some extent, egao, as this case has demonstrated, is far beyond serving as a channel for releasing grievances and frustrations, but expressing the collective attitude toward the governing power, making their own "political statement" (Jenkins, 2006) as critique (Liu, 2013). "Critique", for Foucault, is "the movement by which the subject gives himself the right to question truth on its effects of power and question power on its discourse of truth Figure 1.…”

“…These texts mostly make use of-egao 恶搞 (known as spoof or mock in English), a sort of aesthetic practices and cultural spectacle, constituting a field of cultural struggles with transformative potentials to the passive attitude that Guy Debord (2002) criticizes about spectacles. This spectacle has gradually emerged as one of the most striking culture phenomenon in China, even though it also provokes severe debates (Liu, 2013). Taking a historical perspective, egao is not essentially new.…”

“…10)." China's ironic novels in the Ming-Qing era, pizi 痞子 literatures in mainland China and-wulitou 无厘头 films in Hong Kong can also be seen as the longstanding tradition in which egao is rooted (Liu, 2013).…”

“…In contemporary China Internet Jianghu, as we could see in this case, netizens draw on a wide range of cultural resource, transform film culture symbols, popular culture elements, current affairs, social rumors, all things that are interesting in daily life, and put all these originally uncorrelated and uncoordinated symbols together as different expressive forms such as narratives, poems, puns, songs, images and videos, producing unexpected ironic, humorous and dramatic effect (Liu & Lou, 2009;Liu, 2013). These creative, ironic and subversive discourses, literatures, images, and videos are further exposed and circulated online for new circles of aesthetic practice.…”

“…Textual analysis of these "tragic literature"-here, a peculiar form of "inter-textuality" (Hall, 1997) that draws on different texts and alters their meanings in new contexts-reveals ideas of cultural resistance and activism that challenged the hegemonic power (Downing, 2001;Khan & Kellner, 2005). This kind of challenge indicates sense of "network struggle" (Liu, 2013), since all kinds of power relations or "war"-to use Foucault's (2004) metaphor-"tend to be netwars (Hardt & Negri, 2004: p. 55)". It is increasingly obvious that China Internet has become one of the most effective and popular channels for network struggle, where "creativity, communication, and self-organized cooperation are its primary values (Hardt & Negri, 2004: p.…”