Revisiting 'postcoloniality' through the processes of semiotic landscaping in Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement

Abstract

Postcolonial scholarship, as criticised by Dirlik (2016, p. 774), has been focusing on “the impact of colonization on the colonizer” and “the appropriation of the colonial by native subjects in strategies of resistance”. This model presupposes the coloniser-colonised dichotomy, leaving cultural integration and cases where ‘independence’ is not the trajectory taken under addressed (Chow 1992, p. 153; Dirlik 2016, p. 674). These aspects are salient in the context of globalisation and (neo-)colonialism (Mufwene & Vigouroux 2008, p.1), in which cultural/national categories have been ‘liquidised’ (Bauman 2000), and ‘emancipation/independence’ may risk falling as protectionism and itself becoming a form of oppression (see Heller 2009, p. 105). This paper seeks to contribute to the literature by addressing the conceptual gap, with a focus on the semiotic practices of emancipation’. It argues that language (and other semiotic resources) is used to construct imaginations alternative to the established national categories. Hong Kong, as a former colony still positioned between the U.K. and China, provides insights for understanding how Full Papers Book of Abstracts Page 30 University of Zurich / IACPL; June 4–6, 2018 community members construct ‘localness’ through a transnational repertoire. The paper explores the case of the semiotic landscaping (Järlehed & Jaworski 2015) – including the employment of interdiscursive resources, multilingual signage, and embodied activities, in the Umbrella Movement in 2014, Hong Kong. Juxtaposing images to data collected from participant interviews, the paper explores how an alternative style of ‘postcoloniality’ (see Abbas 1997, p. 10) has been imagined through linguistic/semiotic practices (cf. Anderson 1983). The presentation starts with a brief introduction to the (post)colonial context of Hong Kong and the Umbrella Movement. It then moves on to an analysis of observations relating to and constituting the Movement’s landscape. Building upon the finding, it concludes with a discussion on the plausibility of going beyond the discursive frame of the coloniser-colonised dichotomy through the lens of semiotic cultural integration.