Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference 14-17th December 2016 Program Index

Life and Bends provide telling portraits of women at polar extremes in the territory’s social hierarchy. In
narrating these women’s stories, directors Ann Hui and Flora Lau vividly present the class extremes that
confront Hong Kong as it grapples with its transformation in the second decade of its change in sovereignty
from British colony to Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China.
Hong Zeng Feminist strategies to reflect on Hong Kong cityscape: A study of Linda Lai’s art project Mnemonic
Archiving: A Dispersive Monument
Feminist art has developed in Hong Kong since the 1980s. Many female artists are influenced by western
feminist theories as well as local geopolitical concern, therefore they try to employ feminist strategies to
explore Hong Kong cityscape in their works. This paper examines the feminist qualities in the art practice of
Hong Kong scholar/artist Linda Lai. Based on ethnography as well as textual interpretation, my analysis
focuses on how Lai creates her artworks with freely traveling between her double-identities as scholar/artist.
I argue that Lai realizes it mainly through a phenomenologically tapping into the everyday Hong Kong
cityscape. This phenomenological approach is also crucial for what Sara Ahmed calls for “wonder” which
allows feminist to see and question the surfaces of the world as made.
Chao Long
Women Warriors in Hong Kong: Gender Politics in Wong Bik-Wan’s Portraits of Martyred Women
Hong Kong, the former crown colony of British Empire and now the Special Administrative Region of PRC,
has long been a site for political contests, economic ventures and cultural interactions. In the midst of the
political turmoil in the contemporary Hong Kong society, it becomes ever more urgent for Hong Kong
citizens to recognize and grapple with the different forces in play at Hong Kong, in order to assert their own
identity. This paper examines women’s role in Hong Kong through a reading of Hong Kong Sinophone writer
Wong Bik-Wan’s novel Portraits of Martyred Women. The novel depicts three generations of women’s
struggles against the patriarchal society, celebrates their resilience in times of despair and desolation, and in
turn reflects the broad historical, social and cultural contexts in which these women and Hong Kong are
situated. Specifically, the paper will investigate how the predominant power dynamics in Hong Kong, be it
political, cultural or social, are played out reflexively in the female characters’ everyday life through the
mediation of the text. By scrutinizing the particular situatedness of Hong Kong women, the analysis hopes to
uncover how as a female writer Wong uses her words to overturn the grand narrative of First World feminist
ideology and as a result add more nuanced considerations to World Feminist movements. At the same time,
through this kind of textual intervention, an alternative understanding of Hong Kong as lived space is hoped
to be achieved in the end.
1U
Mobile phones and new imaginaries (Chair, Justine Humphry)
Cecilia Uy-Tioco
Prepaid Mobile Phones: Interactive Labor and Surveillance in the Philippines
The introduction of prepaid mobiles in the Philippines opened the doors to low-income Filipinos, eliminating
costly monthly plans and allowing users to become interactive consumers, paying only for services as they
needed and could afford. While prepaid mobile products and services have expanded to include mobile
banking, Internet surfing, and social media, the anonymity once associated with them has eroded. By
discussing the ostensible consumer empowerment, I develop the argument that this interactivity results in
the construction of mobile phone users as laborers, further drawing those previously excluded from
telecommunication services into the “digital enclosures” of telecom firms and providing telecoms with free
data and enhanced opportunities for surveillance. The more users individuate their mobile phone use and
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