Self-writing as self-determination : a study of documentary Vanished archives and Facebook page ‘Decoding Hong Kong’s history’

Abstract

This dissertation studies the social background, narrations, and distributions of the 2017 documentaryVanished Archives and the Facebook page ‘Decoding Hong Kong’s History’. It examines how the two texts make use of archival materials to narrate the histories of the 1967 Riots and the Sino-British negotiations over Hong Kong’s future respectively as competing narratives against the progressive official narrative of Hong Kong. Situated in post-Umbrella Movement Hong Kong, this dissertation argues that both texts adopt the voice of Hong Kongers to seize the agency of self-writing history as a resistance against the systematic disappearance of history. To trace the disappeared history, the texts destabilise the archival authority’s voice. To articulate the history of Hong Kongers, they further destabilise the progressive narrative by establishing the motif of China’s betrayal of Hong Kong, suggesting that the assertion of agency is the means of resisting the betrayal. This self-determining agency is partially delivered to readers through public distribution campaigns that reach the local community. The campaigns raise readers’ civic awareness on archives law and archive access. They also provide platforms to foster public participation in and discussions on the texts. While readers are awakened to self-determining consciousness by the campaigns, they are yet to be empowered with the agency due to the classed limitations of the distribution of Vanished Archives and the lack of engagement with readers in ‘Decoding’ Facebook page.