Transborder

Abstract

“Transborder” Esther C. M. Yau The University of Hong Kong As a concept, “transborder” involves two main notions, “trans” and “border”. My discussion indicates that “transborder” as a notion has formative significance concerning the past, present, and future of Hong Kong as place and cultural space. Broadly speaking, Hong Kong’s historical formation, its identity affirmation, fluidity, and tensions, and its everyday politics and culture have connections with the rich implications of transborder. These implications are part of the history and everyday dynamics of the city of Hong Kong. They also shed light on the actual acts and imagined space of separation and crossing/connection with past and emergent consequences. Though not yet an existing term in the 1950s, transborder has been relevant and it has acquired different meanings throughout the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The meanings are often taken as part of the debates and discourses on local(ism), national(ism), and global(ism). This discussion unpacks the concept by noting five main lines in the context of Hong Kong: 1) transborder as political and economic order: as such, the order is continuously managed and manipulated according to State(s) military, legal, and diplomatic powers, as what has come “from above”; 2) transborder as a tactical space, whereby responses to state power have manifested own logics and contradictions, as what continues “below”; 3) transborder as an imaginary or symbolic space of imagination whereby cultural writing have participated in constructing and transforming the collective memory and the identities of Hong Kong; 4) transborder as simulation and fantasy in neo-liberalist economics and capitalist globalization, and 5) transborder films and narratives of diaspora, homeland, nostalgia, and de/re/generation in Hong Kong cinema. (265 words)