Introduction: Affect and critical multiculturalism in Asia

This book attempts to explore the “private sphere ” of minority cultures through exploring their affective energies and expressions, in conjunction to analyzing the broad ideological conditions of inter-ethnic relations in various Asian cities. It originates from a research grant received from the Hong Kong government. Taking the important cue of the “affective turn ” in cultural theory over the past twenty years or so, the various contributors of this book raise broadly an overarching question: what are the representations of affective/emotional energies and intensities surrounding the ethnic figures/strangers in cultural production, urban spaces, and social discourses? In Asia, there is little attention paid to the minorities’ own sense of subjecthood , such as 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 a neglect of the surprising and enlivening texture of minorities’ emotional world .