Neoliberalism: the Indiscernable Keyword of Hong Kong Culture

Abstract

Why is neoliberalism a keyword in understanding the operational logic of mainstream Hong Kong? Neoliberalism, I propose, is the Hong Kong government’s theory of governance, which is also shared by its dominant corporate/business sector and ruling elite. They together, in turn, manufactured hegemonic dominance of neoliberal commonsense in mainstream culture. How did neoliberal governance, and the discourse that justifies and promotes it become dominant in Hong Kong? How does Hong Kong culture react to the neoliberalization of our time-space and subjectivity, and in the process prefigures the cultural logic of Hong Kong now and in times to come? Based on long-term frontline participatory observation in Hong Kong cultural politics and social movements I am going to show how Hong Kong people is in resistance to a dual set of biopolitics of control and governmentalities (Foucault 2004), the in-your-face biopolitics of mainlandization (China is called Mainland in local parlance) on the one hand, and the indiscernable biopolitics of neoliberalization on the other. While the biopolitics of mainlandization is already obvious to everyone and abundantly studied, neoliberalism’s biopolitics of control has remained indiscernable. Why?