HKGS2016 Ghostly HK: Otherworldly configurations

Lecture 1: Overview
Why do still need ghosts in HK?
- For teaching children of good conduct
- Important HK history:
o Re-nationalization  Handover to China
o Colonization
o Internationalization

“Belief in ghosts is disbelief in time”

- Measurement of time is mechanical  stands outside of human experience,
preferences
- Neglected, marginalized time?
o Festivals, e.g. no public holiday ghost festivals
o Calendar is not neutral (we are being framed to believe)
 reveal memory, commemoration  foster cultural, political
identity
 highly politicized  made to stabilize society and our perceptions
towards time  manipulate our behaviors
- Cultural production
o Horror movies are banned in China  not allowed to promote the belief
of ghosts  indoctrination of non-ghost world
- Time of modernity
o Emphasizes on progress; linear time
o Ghosts  the dead would come back in some time  shows that time is
not necessarily linear & progressive  may be reversible
- Time of nationality
o HK is still not fully decolonized  confusion to nationality
- HK’s time
o Historical frame
o Nationalization frame
 o Ghosts?  even though it is not widely celebrated  but it is a common
memory to foster identity, e.g. related to Japanese invasion

“Ghosts are spatial and geopolitical”

- Memory, heritage to mark up a particular area  establishing communal identity
as HK-er
- Geopolitical imagination
 capitalism, e.g. Haunted site in Pacific Place
 Movie: using sorcery of SE Asia to support HK was more advanced than these
former colonies in terms of efficiency, civil service, time  the HK system itself
beat the enchantment

“Ghosts are HK’s most reliable storyteller”

- Ghosts are politically indifferent

Group presentation
Area ONE
- Compensatory logic
o Guaranteed quality of life & entertainment to numb political sense
- Economic prosperity
o Property pricing
- Culture
o Popular culture, e.g. 1980s-90s
o Horse racing

Area TWO
- Racial-cultural prejudices
- Gender inequality
- Twisted ideas about SE Asia  reflected in ghostly imaginations
- HK had economic miracle  from small fishing village to now
o Geographically, politically we are more inferior
o In films, we are seen more superior than these decolonized countries
 - How transnational hauntings tell us about positionings of HK, e.g. differences in
capitalistic development
- How do we re-position HK
- Can compare Hollywood horror with HK

Area THREE
- Ethnoscape = movement
- Countries using ghost tours to attract tourists, sell history  economic gain
- Fear about influx of illegal immigrants, e.g. ponytail girl from CUHK  sino-
phobia
- Tourists, refugees, immigrants (e.g. JP invasion  historical trauma)
- Ghostly imaginations becoming the final guardian of historical/traumatic
memories  bypass political system, official textbooks
- HK lifestyle, e.g. Majong, 茶餐廳  related to class, gender, geo-area