Neoliberal governmentality in the arts : a critical examination of the Hong Kong arts' funding mechanism (1995-2015)

Abstract

This thesis examines the Hong Kong arts funding mechanism from 1995 to 2015 through archival analysis and in-depth interviews. The analysis draws specifically from Foucauldian scholarship, especially its notion of governmentality, biopower, biopolitics, and object of knowledge. It also owes intellectual debts to Rose, Giddens, Lemke, Larner and Gramsci for their insights in subjectification and power of representation in modern society. Building on this literature, the study investigates specific governing technologies of Hong Kong arts funding institutions and their governable artists. On the one hand, it explores the power relation and civil resistance in the lens of neoliberal governmentality in the course of decentralization and corporatization. On the other hand, it takes a closer look at limit-experience nature amongst artists in the changing context of sovereignty from the British colonial governance to the communist government of China. In short, it analyzes the art of government for the arts.

Although the arts field is board, the empirical analysis is centered on the oldest arts forms – dance and drama in Hong Kong arts funding tradition. The study is based on archival analysis of funding contracts from 1999 to 2013 as well as 36 in-depth interviews conducted between 2017 and 2018 with participants from state apparatus (Home Affairs Bureau, n=1), statutory bodies (Urban Council, Hong Kong Arts Development Council, n=5) and their artists (n=30).

The findings suggest that there were two historical cracks or aleatory events in terms of Foucault’s historiography; the discontinuity of governing power of statutory institution (Urban Council) in 1999 and the suppression of its successor (Hong Kong Arts Development Council) in 2003. The former has changed the government’s role from the patronage to the sponsor in conformity with neoliberal value. The latter has given rise to a distinctive self-defeating mechanism that opts for subsidy sharing at the expense of meritocracy. Taken together, artists are bound to succumb to government rescue action and bureaucratic morality. The “small” government facilities arts decentralization but it ends up bringing artists into a big and invisible sovereign sphere. The argument is that the colonial executive-led practice and the postcolonial neoliberal logic carry a strong link to governing technologies for the suppression of Hong Kong ideology, identity, and cultural citizenship. The arts government is hindered to the unsettled sovereignty power in Hong Kong, as the central government of China intends to reinstall power of subjectification at a distance.

The study has made three important contributions to the literature: 1) it introduces a new dimension in Foucauldian scholarship to link up biopower of creativity and cultural democracy; 2) it diagnoses the problem of neoliberalism that produces a simplified truth for arts governance in an extensive favor of public accountability; 3) it addresses that measuring arts is paradoxical in the modern history of governing discourse, because the neoliberal government is trying to nail down an objective and unbiased view provided by a collection of arts experts. Ironically, this expertise representation invents a new technology of power that rules very details in artistic life and powers of creativity.