Locating negative affects in post-reform China

This panel takes the prevalence of positivity in post-reform China as an invitation to investigate its opposites: the variety of negative ordinary affects that can be viewed as ensuing from state-induced “situations of restricted agency”. What can we learn from the various forms of negativity that morph out of the socio-political circumstances of post-reform China, and how to tread a fine line between the risk of romanticization and analytical dismissal? Under what conditions do the expression and performance of negative affects constitute “a manifestation of autonomy from state directives” in the context of pervasive “happiness” campaigns? Or is their work ambivalent, if not problematic, especially when they come to be associated with specific marginalized groups?