‘Revolution of Our Times’: Stateless Nationalism and the Work of Slogans in the Hong Kong Diaspora

ABSTRACT This article examines how the slogan 光復香港, 時代革命 (Gwong fuk hoeng gong, si doi gaak ming, Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times)—banned under Hong Kong's National Security Law (NSL)—has been resignified by diaspora communities in the UK, Australia and Canada. Drawing on Laclau's concept of empty signifiers and Guibernau's theory of nations without states, it argues that the slogan stabilizes a floating ‘Hongkonger’ identity and performs a stateless nationalism grounded in symbolic infrastructure, not territorial sovereignty. Using corpus‐assisted discourse analysis (CADS), the study traces how diaspora organizations (DOs) embed the slogan in acts of remembrance, pedagogy, advocacy and community‐building. Despite regional differences, the slogan functions as a hegemonic discursive node, enabling a transnational imagined community. It becomes a vessel of shared memory and moral agency—a performative expression of national belonging in exile. The article contributes to debates on diaspora, affective nationalism and the symbolic production of stateless political identity.