Public space and affect: Political sensibilities, biographical narratives and emotional framing in China

Abstract

The division between public and private spaces is particularly tenuous in contemporary China, in particular due to measures governing social space. Some government techniques here consist of incorporating or associating individual initiatives with institutions emanating from the state. In this way, together with the constrained political context, the public dimension of activities held in certain public spaces can be particularly sensitive. In such cases, strategies such as emotional framing may be used not to eliminate the political charge as such, but to reduce its overly sensitive nature. The work of emotions, then, appears to be twofold: on the one hand, it allows us to frame speeches around individual narrations centred on particular affectivities; second, in so doing it partially reduces the political charge that can be produced in the public spaces in question. However this process does not obliterate any political dimension of these spaces. Indeed, the emotional narratives allow us to shift from the individual to the collective, and thus participate in producing something political.