Feeling the 2019 Hong Kong anti-ELAB movement: emotion and affect on the Lennon Walls

Abstract

In this study, I discuss the affective dynamics in Hong Kong’s anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill movement through examining the emotion and affect surrounding four Lennon Walls in various parts of the city. The Lennon Walls—public spaces decorated with numerous colorful sticky notes—became a hallmark of the 2019 protests. Most of the notes were hand-written spontaneously by passers-by, who used words, phrases, emojis, sketches, and cartoons to communicate information about the protest, frame issues, stir emotions, and charge the movement with affective intensities. I argue that the walls galvanize the population to sense, feel, experience, and act in ways that foster political feelings. Combining textual analysis and ethnographic observations, I show that the walls mediate discursive emotional expressions and non-discursive affective intensities, illustrating the affective dynamics of the movement in terms of its temporality, visibility, and operationality—the concentrated formations of emotion and affect. Together, these orient and move us in social movements by allowing us to feel through our bodily reactions and affective responses and act upon these felt experiences. The walls are able to marshal the resources of the minds and bodies of those who created and sustained them and give rise to political passions and movement actions.

Keywords:

• Emotion
• affect
• social movements
• political feelings
• sticky notes
• the Lennon Walls
• Hong Kong movement

Acknowledgement

I appreciate the insightful comments provided by the two anonymous reviewers that significantly helped me to strengthen the article. I also want to express my gratitude to my student assistants: Hans Tse helped me photographed parts of the Lennon Walls; Gelan Yin and Henry Choy did a great job of transcribing the photographed sticky-note texts into Excel spreadsheets. Jinsook Kim, Karen Lee, Ji-hyun Ahn, and Jennifer Kang all offered constructive feedback on an early version of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Notes on contributors

Sara Liao

Sara Liao is a media scholar and feminist. She works as an assistant professor of Media Studies and Asian Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. Her research investigates how media, the state, consumerism, and gender dynamics are imbricated in the production of culture and the various forms of identities in a transnational setting, with a focus on broader Chinese societies.