Lyricism of the Chance Encounter; or, The Cultural Specificity of Affect in (Examples of) Hong Kong Cinema

Like any theoretical term, the phrase “culturally specific”, together with its conceptual affiliates such as cultural difference, the local, native and indigenous, invites different approaches of exploration, but in the context of Hong Kong culture, including film and literature, the question that seems unavoidable is how the culturally specific as such has become or persisted as a question worth asking. In a world that is often described as global, simultaneous and instantaneous, on the one hand, and as subject to systemic racialization and racism, on the other, can cultural specificity be understood in terms of a temporal lag and a pause against that incessant stream of simultaneity and instantaneity, and in terms of an affective cluster distinct from the hegemonically mandated, academic notions of “race”?