How Negative Feelings in the White Paper Movement Could (Impossibly) Form a Unity

Discussing and thinking about the white paper movement is difficult. On the one hand, many activists in the country face prison and cannot speak out. It seems that those on the outside or on the fringes of the movement should not be the first to say something when the parties are forced to silence. But on the other hand, if we no longer think about the experience of these actions, and no longer connect the current situation with the movement, how can we remember and continue the movement so that it is not just a historical accident.

The following thoughts emerged after re-reading several reflection articles on the Blank Movement in early February. I tried to answer some of the questions raised in these articles about the "limitations" of the movement, and I think that when we think about the movement's context, we should draw to longer time spans and take into account the emotional aspects of the sport itself in the analysis. The articles I want to respond to in this article are mainly: " Three Forces Gathered in Blank Paper Protests: Understanding the Limitations and Revolutionary Nature of China's 2022 Social Movement " written by Zuo Yue on the reporter, " Talking about the impact of the "Blank Paper Movement" on future social protests" written by Zuo Wang Inspiration ".

Anecdotal analysis often attributes the outbreak of the White Paper Movement to political and economic factors, including the crisis of people's livelihood in 2022, secondary disasters caused by the epidemic lockdown, increased distrust of the government, and so on. These factors have their merits, but they seem to be insufficient. They fit the words/actions of those who took to the streets, but it is difficult to explain the explosiveness of the movement in a short period of time and the rapid silence. Moreover, the three groups of people of different classes and social positions should have completely different feelings and interests about these political and economic factors. Why can grassroots workers, urban citizens, and overseas students develop parallel and Relevant three sports?

Faced with such a problem, instead of finding the answer from the social structure, it is better to go back to the social state before the movement and think about it. The answer to this question can also provide the direction of thinking for Zuo Yue's question of "what is the specific infrastructure construction" that Zuo Yue cares about.

My response is that we should pay attention to the negative emotions that are common in society. They are not the basis of unity and do not have the energy of movement, but they can be the "intermediary" of unity and the "catalyst" of movement. These emotions are popular in contemporary social networks in the form of multiple groups of words such as lying flat, carrying a bucket and running, Dashen, Neijuan, 996, Shehu, and Run. Although these words originate from different social groups and have different contexts, they all reflect a state of mostly personal frustration that rejects positive energy and seeks temporary relief. They are not a language of revolution, and may even dissolve the individual's sense of struggle, but that does not mean that they cannot be a language of unity.

This is a seemingly contradictory statement. Books on social movement studies argue that "anger" and "hope" are the basis for people to unite, angry at the injustice of reality, while yearning for and imagining a new future. According to this argument, the negative sentiment prevalent in Chinese society cannot be a language of solidarity. Because although they come from dissatisfaction with reality, they cannot lead to specific criticism of the real situation. Anger is also classified as inward hardship, and hope for the future is even less likely to exist.

However, social movements are more a process of collective growth. If anger is important, what is before anger? If we need hope, how do we believe and imagine the future? I can't say exactly how, or exactly how it was formed, but I think we can all understand that there are situations where we can never embrace anger and hope. It's impossible if you live in fear and stress day and night. Impossible if one person is embedded in the social production machine alone. If you work overtime in the dark, it is impossible. If you still live in the social competition that yearns for success and victory, it is impossible.

The potential of negative emotion is that it can temporarily throw off the shackles of individuals in these layers of impossible states, and be in a temporary state of flight. It embraces frustration and, from it, offers individuals respite from social oppression. Another more important meaning is that in the state of escape, we can see individuals in the same situation and let them meet each other. This is a chance encounter under passive avoidance, but it may also become an opportunity for true unity tomorrow.

In the operation of 2022, such a transformation is actually not uncommon. The crowds on Urumqi Road in Shanghai did not gather for protests, but for huge pain, deep and negative mourning. People on the road met silently at first. It wasn't until the police came to intervene that the pain, grief and resentment among the crowd turned into temporary unity through some tentative slogans and dialogues. At the end of October, the collective escape of Foxconn workers was not an act of solidarity. It was a helpless choice of being trapped in the dormitory and fearing infection in the factory. But the escape of 10,000 people is not an escape, and it has collective significance in itself. A reporter also interviewed workers in Chengzhong Village, Haizhu District, Guangzhou. The workers there first began to attack the blockade collectively. One of the interviewees said, "In fact, what we (as foreigners) fear is being forgotten by Guangzhou."

The blank paper itself carries similar negative emotions. I want to express, but I can't say it, I can't say it, I don't know what to say. Blank paper is not only a self-protection strategy, but also because of its negative characteristics, it can resonate more. The white flag is a symbol of admitting defeat, but it can be used as a symbol of movement. Isn't it just an example of this negative emotion and unity?

What I want to respond to is that when thinking and acting for the current and future movements, we should conceive how to build the infrastructure of the movement. But this kind of infrastructure is also multifaceted, it can be organizational, technological, ideological, and cultural. Its focus should be on how to connect more oppressed people together. The negative emotions that exist both above and below the movement in the white paper movement should be the starting point for us to think about infrastructure construction. We can't just regard emotional accumulation as an explicit result, but as an important sports resource. More specifically, in such an infrastructure, we should have a way to allow various personal, negative, indecent, and speechless experiences to be passed on. The term infrastructure, which has an industrial color, may not be very appropriate. I still prefer to use Zuowang's metaphor of capillaries. Social movements are a kind of continuously growing organisms, and we need negative emotions as an intermediary.

Another point that Zuo Yue talked about was the limitation of the movement, mainly because there was no dialogue and linkage mechanism between the resistance of citizens/students and workers. This makes the movements parallel to each other, instead of cohesive and promoting change. The difficulty of solving this problem is that the difference in class position makes life experience and dialogue difficult, and the creation of these connections becomes even less likely in the absence of social groups such as labor agencies. For overseas communities, there is no doubt that the problem more serious. This question requires more specific proposals on movement strategies, organizational methods. But negative emotions can also provide us with some inspiration. In specific labor production, there is a huge gap between the experiences of blue-collar workers and urban white-collar/professionals and overseas students, but under the same highly competitive nation-state/capitalist production machine, negative emotions may On the contrary, it has more intimacy. And when we understand and learn from workers’ experience, we should not only understand workers from the perspective of legal system guarantees, labor production process, economic situation, etc., but try to compare and communicate these negative emotions in a concrete way. We may not be immediately united under one exploited mechanism, but it is possible to meet first in these distressed wanderings.

I hope that the above late-night thoughts can provide some directions for specific thinking, or objects for criticism.