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Space-Clearing Flânerie: Remapping Hong Kong in Dung Kai-cheung’s Atlas and My Little Airport’s Songs

Mei Mingxue Nan
This paper discusses the space-clearing flânerie of post-1997 Hong Kong literature and culture as it appears in Dung Kai-cheung’s novel Atlas: The Archeology of an Imaginary City and Hong Kong indie band My Little Airport’s music. Drawing from postcolonial theory, it rethinks flânerie in post-1997 Hong Kong as an act of worlding. Comparing the lexical flânerie in Dung Kai-cheung’s Atlas and the sonic flânerie in My Little Airport’s songs as two ways of worlding Hong Kong, it continues the inquiries of the formation of a post-handover Hong Kong subjectivity in the field of Hong Kong studies. This paper demonstrates how the flâneurs and flâneuses of contemporary Hong Kong, in their continuous strolling as an attempt to clear themselves a space in the post-handover city, open the possibilities of belonging in pluralistic ways with a new Hong Kong subjectivity that is both local and cosmopolitan.
Publication date
1 Jan 2021 – 31 Dec 2021
Journal title, volume/issue number, page range
New Directions in Flânerie: Global Perspectives for the Twenty-First Century, eds. Kelly Comfort and Marylaura Papalas, 1st ed., pp. 173-195.
ISSN
9780367759483
Specialisation
Humanities
Theme
Literature
Art and Culture
Globalisation