Creating a Textual Public Space

Abstract

The Umbrella Movement (Sept-Dec 2014) represented a watershed for Hong Kong’s political culture and self-understanding. Based on over 1000 slogans and other textual and visual material documented during the movement, this study provides an overview of its claims. The slogans mobilize a diversity of cultural and historical repertoires that attest to the hybrid quality of Hong Kong identity and underscore the diversity of sources of political legitimacy. Finally, it is argued that by establishing a system of contending discourses within the occupied public spaces, the movement strived to act out a type of discursive democracy, which represents an unfinished attempt to build a new civic culture among Hong Kong’s younger generation.