Visuality, Emotions and Minority Culture ― Feeling Ethnic

This book, stemming from an international conference, mainly explores the “private sphere” of minority cultures. To date, insufficient attention has been paid to ethnic minorities’ sense of subjecthood, e.g. their construction and articulation of self-understanding formed through lived experiences, sensibilities, emotions, sentiments, empathy, and even tempers and moods. Social misunderstanding, not to mention stereotyping, mystification and discrimination, often stems from neglecting the surprising and enlivening texture of minorities’ emotional world. Taking the important cue of the “affective turn” in cultural theory over the past 15 years or so, the contributors address questions such as: what are the representations of affective/emotional energies and intensities surrounding the ethnic figures/strangers in visual culture (e.g. passivity, shame, anger, joy, charm, belonging, etc.), how do ethnic minorities respond to these visual narratives, and how can their self-representation through visual discourse reveal and transform their lived experiences.

John Nguyet Erni is Chair Professor in Humanities and Head of the Department of Humanities & Creative Writing at Hong Kong Baptist University. Erni has published widely on international and Asia-based cultural studies, human rights legal criticism, Chinese consumption of transnational culture, gender and sexuality in media culture, youth consumption culture in Hong Kong and Asia, and critical public health. He was a recipient of the Rockefeller and Annenberg research fellowships. He is also an elected Fellow and Member of the Executive of the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities. He is the author or editor of nine books, most recently (In)visible Colors: Images of Non-Chinese in Hong Kong Cinema – A Filmography, 1970s – 2010s (with Louis Ho, Cinezin Press, 2016); Visuality, Emotions, and Minority Culture (forthcoming in 2016, Springer); Understanding South Asian Minorities in Hong Kong (with Lisa Leung, HKUP, 2014).