The Theatricality of Lion Rock: Toward a New Materialist Theory for Events of Dissention

The theatricality of Lion Rock: Toward a new materialist theory for events of dissention

Gruber, David R

Published in: Quarterly Journal of Speech

DOI: 10.1080/00335630.2020.1828607

Publication date: 2020

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Citation for published version (APA): Gruber, D. R. (2020). The theatricality of Lion Rock: Toward a new materialist theory for events of dissention. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 106(4), 453-469. https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2020.1828607

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The theatricality of Lion Rock: A new materialist theory for events of dissention

David R. Gruber

To cite this article: David R. Gruber (2020) The theatricality of Lion Rock: A new materialist theory for events of dissention, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 106:4, 453-469, DOI: 10.1080/00335630.2020.1828607 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2020.1828607

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Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rqjs20 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH 2020, VOL. 106, NO. 4, 453–469 https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2020.1828607

The theatricality of Lion Rock: A new materialist theory for events of dissention

David R. Gruber Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY Rhetorical scholarship typically conceptualizes an event of Received 8 May 2019 dissention as a break in a dominant discourse. More recent Accepted 5 September 2020 scholarship drawing upon rhetorical ecologies and new KEYWORDS materialisms suggests, however, that analyses of events of fi Bodies; dissent; Hong Kong; dissention would bene t from greater consideration of bodies materiality; protest and environments. Things can also initiate “fissures of unreason” through their material presences and encounters with their physical dynamics, un/healthful effects, or felt forces. An analysis of the 2014 Lion Rock pro-democracy protest in Hong Kong encourages detailed thinking about how material capacities enable protest rhetorics. Ultimately, I argue that the event at Lion Rock is best characterized as a theatrical event of dissention, which demonstrates the integral role of the material in bringing about “unruly rhetorics.”

Hong Kong has been a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China since the British handover in 1997 after over one hundred years of colonial administration.1 As a result of British governance and influence, Hong Kong has existed with a largely independent political structure having its own system of laws.2 However, in September of 2014, the Hong Kong government proposed reforms to the process of electing the Chief Executive of the region, which made clear that in the event of open democratic elections, Beijing would be able to reject any chosen Executive deemed unfavorable to the Communist Party of China (CPC). Although the Chief Executive position was and continues to be chosen by a select group of influential business people and lawmakers, having free elections has been a long-term goal for many dedicated to democracy in Hong Kong.3 The new legislation would have stripped any electoral process of its meaningfulness, as a CPC-leaning official would be the only viable choice. On September 26, 2014, this devel- opment sparked an inter-university student advocacy group called The Hong Kong Fed- eration of Students to join with a pro-democracy student group called Scholarism to stage a large protest outside of the Central Government Complex. The movement quickly picked up steam and media attention, ballooning to thousands within twenty-four hours.4 Two days later, the Occupy Central with Love and Peace movement was declared, and up to 100,000 people shut down several blocks in the city’s business district for three months, until December 11.5 Students and other likeminded advocates demanded free

CONTACT David R. Gruber [email protected] © 2020 National Communication Association 454 D. R. GRUBER elections and the continuation of Hong Kong’s unique and protected status. In some of the earliest efforts to dislodge the protestors, the police deployed tear gas against the students, eliciting sympathy for the students from both the local population and global audi- ences.6 Because students used umbrellas as protection, the movement soon became known as the “Umbrella Movement.”7 News images of students defiantly raising yellow umbrellas while tear gas canisters fell around them served as a visual declaration of the vivacious spirit of those Hongkongers desiring more transparent and free democratic processes even as Beijing sought greater control.8 A month into the protest movement, however, progress had stalled. The Chief Executive, Leung Chun-ying, stated that the new Beijing-oriented election system would go forward, regardless of any further student action. Leung, known locally as CY, was largely viewed as a Beijing stooge and nicknamed the “wolf” of Hong Kong for his failure to express care for the region’spoorandhisefforts to undermine pro- democracy parties.9 In a news interview on October 20, Leung floated a new line of argumentation, saying that “DemocracywouldseepoorpeopledominatetheHong Kong vote.”10 This statement, alongside threats to arrest student protest leaders, further entrenched the government and pro-democracy advocates and prompted a pre- viously unknown group of fourteen rock climbers to create a massive 6×28 meter yellow banner reading “I Want Real Universal Suffrage” in traditional Chinese characters.11 The group—calling themselves “Hong Kong Spidie”12 after the superhero Spi- derman—scaled the face of Lion Rock, a 495-meter granite mountain towering over Hong Kong. The climbers hung the banner and video recorded the event. One climber, dressed in full Spiderman costume, crouched on top of Lion Rock like the iconic superhero. He addressed the camera, stating that Hong Kong Spidie hung the banner because

the chief executive [CY] only cares about the rich people living on Victoria Peak … We think the spirit of Lion Rock isn’t just about money. The people fighting for real universal suffrage all over Hong Kong have shown great perseverance. This kind of fighting against injustice, strength in the face of troubles, is the true Lion Rock spirit.13 Images of the pro-democracy banner draped down the face of Lion Rock “exploded on social media.”14 News stories in the days that followed highlighted the daring aspects of the act, not only in terms of the unmissable textual declaration above the city but also the physical feat of climbing up there and hanging it. South China Morning Post, the premier newspaper of the region, reported that “the climbers’ nerve” prompted numerous social posts.15 Likewise, Coconuts Hong Kong, a cheeky news media site targeting a millennial audience, captured the sentiment when it reported, “Whoa! Some crazy mountain climbers have managed to unfurl a massive banner saying ‘I want real universal suffrage’ from Hong Kong’s iconic Lion Rock Mountain!”16 A second article the next day featured “the epic behind-the-scenes video, which features the rock climbers rappelling down the rock face.”17 A series of memes after the initial event circulated widely and included images of the banner being taken to the moon by astronauts, being worn by the lion standing at the edge of the rock from the film The Lion King, and being waved gloriously and proudly over the night lights of Hong Kong.18 In the following days, small copies of the banner were made into ribbons and distributed to protestors who plastered them across the city and wore them on their shirts.19 The recognizable image of the yellow banner, which remained on Lion Rock for just over twenty-four hours before being QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH 455 removed by government officials, crystallized the determination of the protestors and the message of the Umbrella Movement. In analyzing the specific case of Lion Rock, I demonstrate how the immense bodily efforts performed using the material qualities of the rock itself, so set in the cityscape, turns this act of protest into a theatrical event of dissention—a timely and stunningly physical performance working with and through salient materialities. A theatrical event of dissention emphasizes kairos as an emergent quality of bodily engagement and material environment.20 In this instance, members of the “Hong Kong Spidie” group kairotically commingled their bodily performances with Lion Rock’s material capacities to shift the political discourse and deepen feelings about democracy amongst protestors in Hong Kong at that time. Lion Rock, as a theatrical event of dissention, serves as a paradigmatic case of doing with that exposes not only how things, like rocks, can inspire protestors to resist political arrangements but also how they provide the means through which “unruly rhetorics” emerge.21 Lion Rock encourages more detailed thinking about how material capacities enable performances of political dissent that break or fissure dominant discourses. In what follows, I review the rhetorical literature on events of dissention, noting the emphasis on discursive dimensions in order to forward a revised concept that I call the theatrical event of dissention. This concept foregrounds how and to what extent material presences and human-nonhuman relations open spaces of dissention. Theatrical events of dissention become possible when material environments appear as “fissures” such that bodies discover something new and scandalous to do in relation to a thing, not necessarily a discourse. Living with materiality—touching, breathing, using, disco- vering what things can do—commences new possibilities for dissent. Consequently, theatrical events of dissention may prove instructive to both rhetorical theory and governance. I conclude by arguing that theatrical events of dissention may push leaders to witness anew the material and ecological relations of a region by exposing how daily routines in specific environments forge political sensitivities and how citizens perform their own subjectivities through foregrounding material and geographical dependencies. A theatrical event of dissention may lead, I argue, to a deeper compassion for the protestors. Thus, the material formations composing the event deserve attention as they provide some direction for how to respond with care if and when dissent arises.

Rhetorical dissention: From discourses to bodies and environments With the aim of outlining a rhetorical theory of dissent, Kendall R. Phillips builds on Robert L. Ivie’s notion that dissent is an essential democratic practice. Phillips argues that Ivie’s contribution is in seeing dissenters as “tricksters, tactically violating the rules of decorum and deliberation in order to achieve their goals or, at least, articulate their concerns.” Nevertheless, as Phillips notes, the conditions that enable the trick to be performed are not well conceptualized.22 As a result, Phillips proposes that “regular patterns of knowing and doing” stage salient possibilities for dissent. In his view, dissent exists as an event “within the dominant structures of regular, habitual discourse” and can be characterized as “a singular and unique moment in which regular cycles of time are disrupted and the emergence of something new is possible.”23 Phillips presents the “disruption” through Michel Foucault’s study of discourse: “Discourse formations 456 D. R. GRUBER provide a means of intelligibility by establishing appropriate terms, relations between terms, authority, expectations, etc.”24 Thus, effective dissent often targets “the gaps and contradictions inherent in the existing formation of discourse.”25 Within this theory of dissent, scholars discover “structures of reason” and “fissures of unreason” that stage a tension enunciated at a kairotic moment, one that emphasizes a domineering discourse containing unavoidable punctures addressed through dissent. Despite expanding dissent beyond the confines of Lloyd Bitzer’s “rhetorical situation,” despite describing openings in discourse as spaces, and despite focusing on the dissenting moment as an “event,” Phillips’s theory of dissent is discourse-centric and would benefit from greater consideration of things, bodies, and environments, which also stage material “structures of reason.” Things and environments, like raging rivers, black factory smoke, and collapsing bridges, can initiate “fissures of unreason” through their material presences and encounters with their physical dynamics, un/healthful effects, or felt forces. The rhetorical “gaps and fissures” are both human and nonhuman. They are not discursive only; they are not human “voices of dissent” only.26 A theory of rhetorical dissent that remains rooted in inventive breaks from discursive norms and focused on the “pre- viously unspeakable”27 remains silent on all that things, bodies, and environments can do. A rhetorical theory of dissent ought to attend to the mutually constitutive entanglements of things, bodies, and environments. To expand the Aristotelian notion of thinking from “the available means of persuasion,” to think more ecologically,28 and to act ambiently,29 rhetorical scholars should ask how entanglements among bodies, transportation infrastructures, sewer systems, mountain ranges, mineral deposits, pipelines, and other environmental entities create possibilities for events of dissention. Rhetorical scholars have begun to do so by studying the body as a source of material rhetoric and political protest. Beginning with Sharon Crowley and Jack Seltzer’s landmark volume Rhetorical Bodies, bodies have been conceived as “marked” and “expressions of discourse.”30 Although initial studies tended to “textualize” the body by analyzing bodies within cultural narratives, more recent scholarship examines the material forces of bodies as such. Referring specifically to political performance, Kevin M. DeLuca theorizes “bodies as resources for argumentation and advocacy.”31 He describes how several organizations in the 1990s, including ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and Queer Nation staged “images of bodies—vulnerable bodies, dangerous bodies, taboo bodies, ludicrous bodies, transfigured bodies” in order to challenge discriminatory policies and enact forms of “public argumentation.”32 In like manner, Brett Lunceford details the ways that “nudity is employed as a means of social change.”33 The act of public nudity in context of political protest, as he theorizes it, is a tactical challenge to social norms and values.34 Although largely presented as a text-body, the nude body, as Lunceford points out, retains the force of shock and sexu- ality, once situated in charged atmospheres, able to make a material proclamation and a claim on others through the exposure of shape, size, color, scar, and injury.35 Similarly, Kristin Marie Bivens and Kirsti Cole examine how the splashing and display of body fluids functions as a “grotesque protest strategy” and a means “to show humanity’s simi- larities” such that emphasizing body fluids aims to “equalize differential political power relations.”36 In cases where blood or semen are thrown onto politicians or displayed in taboo ways, the body itself challenges how it is being “legislated, sanitized, and con- trolled.”37 Aware of this fleshy history of engagement in politics, Karma R. Chávez QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH 457 turns back to the field of rhetoric, arguing that “analyses must grapple with bodies” if the field is going to be able to resist “forms of dominance such as white supremacy and mis- ogyny.”38 Chávez offers a compelling insight: “If the body conforms to conventions, it is insignificant; if it does not, it becomes central to inquiry.”39 The focus on bodily noncon- formance proves apropos for the formation of a theatrical event of dissention, as explored in the following section. A theatrical event of dissention—as a rebellious doing with an environment at a kairotic moment—could never be fully expounded as discursive activity precisely because performance gains its power, as Quintilian understood, from bodily gesture on a stage.40 Indeed, the nature of performance is of and for the stage. Materiality unavoidably grounds the affective sensations of moral and political outrage proper to declarations of decay, feelings of wrong allocations of resources, and outrage at barriers that charac- terize suppressed communities. Materiality remains always within and inseparable from representational accounts of bodies in strife. Walls, water flows, housing conditions, traffic noise, and sewage systems serve as lived terrain for dissenters to discover the means to proclaim their cause. Phaedra C. Pezzullo makes a similar observation when describing how environmentally-minded tour guides have produced first-hand experi- ences of polluted lands to confront tourists with the disgust and pain of those assaulted by local toxins on a daily basis.41 There, the specifics on the ground matter. The protest is not “somewhere ‘out there,’” as Pezzullo says, but the horrific, toxic conditions themselves compose an argument for addressing them.42 The assertive vibrations of materiality are central to theatrical events of dissention as well, but foregrounding materiality to raise awareness, build solidarity, or catch attention does not necessarily construct a theatrical event of dissention in the sense developed here.

Theatrical events of dissention: Seizing a material moment In 2015, women’s rights activists in India hung placards around their necks and sang songs during organized night time bus rides in order to protest the brutal gang rape of a woman on a Delhi city bus.43 In 2017, processions of women clothed in crimson- hooded robes walked silently through state houses across the nation to protest an erosion of women’s rights, embodying the characters created by Margaret Atwood in The Handmaid’s Tale.44 Such events use the spaces of repressive governance or locations of violence, the routines of citizens or the routes of transportation to communicate an urgent need for reform and to bring attention to a cause. These protest events, performative in approach and able to provoke wide responses, function in much the same way as the theatrical events that I aim to theorize. Delhi bus rides or State House marches are performative, but they are, importantly, distributed and repeatable—able to be performed by different bodies across various locations on different days. In contrast, a theatrical event of dissention is unrepeatable, and as such, punctures the stalemate of political entrenchment and indecision. Theatrical events of dissention are performative with/in specific environments that co-constitute just the right physical expression at just the right time and seem, therefore, more likely to become iconic cases of a broader protest.45 Understood through an ambient conception of kairos, events of dissention happen because lives and local environments are “enmeshed,” as Thomas Rickert says, but theatrical events also capture the moment in an especially poignant way. They 458 D. R. GRUBER direct attention to a discontinuity between political discourse and experience because the material things grounding that experience have become suddenly so palpable.46 In this respect, the theatrical event also resonates with a concept of kairos conceptualized “as a practice that exceeds socio-anthropological ‘adaptation’” to particular conditions.47 A theatrical event of dissention, in other words, ruptures the status quo through a notable, dramatic engagement with things. The protestor both seizes and is seized by material structures, stepping beyond “adaptation to conditions” at a time of discussion about conditions. The distinguishing characteristic of this kairotic struggle is that it occurs because particular things in daily life make it so difficult for the dissention not to occur. The agencies are human and nonhuman, dispersed. Explained in direct reference to the theater, the elements of the performance space compose—no, summon—the protestor’s cry. The moldy boards of the stage floor, the gashes in the black stage curtains, and the icky old gum stuck under the seats become part of the show and surprise the audience—because the mayor attends to tout a magnificent investment in the arts. Like Andrew Pickering’s concept of ontological theater, the show is for one night only and totally dependent on how actors shift with the suddenly salient affordances of the environment.48 Theater professor Jim Davis argues that the stunning or fear-inducing street performance is just that because it “disrupts the quotidian” and invokes an “invisible theater” at precisely the moment when the disruption can create a set of characters—fools, unwitting participants, and tricksters—whose actions then become sensational due to their efforts to maintain conditions.49 Halting all public metro trains has knock-off effects: a man screams at a metro attendant while a business woman in heels books it through Times Square to make it to an important meeting. The theatrical event, in a similar way, creates a disruption with the capacity to cause scurrying—panic for some, joy for others, long-lasting humiliation, or inspiration. Yet, the comparison to the theatrical event of dissention is not precisely made unless the disruption happened because of what the train system did for the city and what it came to mean in material terms for those encountering political efforts to dismantle it. For a theatrical event of dissention, materiality does not matter as much as materiality made present through a specific context and time. Importantly, then, whether a theatrical event of dissention succeeds in achieving recognition or not remains hooked into a rhetorical ecological with multiple factors: the type of incursion on normality, the scale or intensity of the effort, the qualities of the material thing co-constituting the protest, the severity of resistance against it, the compatibility of the symbolic effect with a broader cultural way of life, and the alignment of the act with the protest audience, i.e., all the situated circumstances at a time and place. This pushes toward a point: clearly, not every protest event, should a theatrical one occur, leads to intended results. Positive outcomes of momentary “punctures” are often slippery. Time dissolves the salient relations, and agencies shift with revised political ecologies. Although protestors in Hong Kong rallied around the Lion Rock banner, for example, and managed to stall new election regulations, democracy is now on a back burner. Beijing’s rule of law and agenda in the region are stronger than ever.50 Nevertheless, this theatrical event of dissention stands as a paradigmatic moment for the 2014 protest, and for many, Lion Rock remains a monument to the Umbrella Movement. Thus, there is something about a theatrical event of dissention that resonates in bodies because it touches QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH 459 abodes. Theatrical events of dissention teach about materiality’s crucial role in the formation of an important moment of protest. In moving forward, I generate a “symmetrical inquiry” where the scholar analyzes what Graham describes as the “coequals” of “the symbolic, the affective and the physical” in a context.51 The approach can also be termed, broadly, a material-discursive analysis. Here, the critic makes discriminations, as Stormer explains, to understand the performative coming-into-being of an event.52 Adopting the approach indicates my view that rhetorical scholars taking a new materialist orientation stressing ecological integrations and extended agencies are able to discover ways to direct attention to the “qualities of relations between entities, not just among humans, that enable different modes of rhetoric to emerge, flourish, and dissipate.”53 There is no methodological absence for examin- ing events of dissention as material creations, but there is a theoretical absence and a lack of discussion. In this case, to understand the rhetorical articulation of the event, I visit the site, walk the streets of Hong Kong, and hike to Lion Rock. The experience—along with years of living in Hong Kong—is a meditation on the event, which I myself witnessed in 2014. This strong dedication to place and to tangibility builds an analysis recognizing “materi- alization and signification as outcomes of a common venture … It [an articulation analysis] is also about the formation of order, of the body and of speech, bringing together the material world, language, and spatial arrangement in one act.”54 With this approach, I traverse the terrain of a protest movement and seek to discover the material capacitation for the Lion Rock intervention and to understand how the stunning theatricality of a notable event at a particularly kairotic moment is a matter of ecologies congealing suddenly into a bodily doing.

Articulating theatricality in the Lion Rock banner protest Landscapes and infrastructures Lion Rock is an unmissable mass. Surging upwards from the base of Hong Kong’s dense urban sprawl, the granite pinnacle careens toward the clouds. Towering to 495 meters (1,624 feet) and incredibly steep in sections, Lion Rock presents a physical challenge to the climber. The task is typically achieved from a long winding gravel trail going up its back. The face of the rock is too steep for the average hiker desiring a daytrip. Looking out from the peak, one sees innumerable high-rise apartment buildings, and in the distance, the ocean surrounds the famous blue, pink, and yellow neon skyline spread along the shore. The old gritty rock stands steadfast against the modern techno-sheen of Hong Kong. Immediately below Lion Rock sits Kowloon, which includes the neighborhoods of Chuk Yuen, Kowloon City, and Wang Tau Hom, all of which have a reputation for being overcrowded middle-class zones once desperately poor. Each neighborhood pre- viously housed immigrants from the Chinese Civil War after World War II and later became sites for government housing projects designed to provide permanent homes for squatters.55 In addition, Kowloon City has had its own wild history as the only place in Hong Kong from 1950s to the 1980s where British colonial rule was, by and large, not enforced. This neighborhood was dominated by gang activity, prostitution, and gambling.56 At that time, it came to be known as “The Walled City,” a slice of 460 D. R. GRUBER

“old Hong Kong,” as tourists today might say, having a designation imbued with pride or terror, depending on who was being asked.57 As people moved to these areas, started schools, established public parks, and built a new life for themselves, Lion Rock took on emblematic status. A television series called Below Lion Rock ran from the 1970s to the 1990s and “told stories about the grassroots people who lived in the public housing estates and squatter huts in the working-class communities directly below Lion Rock.”58 The TV show made popular a narrative about a new life in Hong Kong. As Yuen Chan says, “The dramas captured the reality of everyday life for ordinary Hongkongers, many of whom were people or the children of people who had sought refuge in the colony from war and persecution in mainland China.”59 Lion Rock, thus, held latent protest symbolism with respect to China, and the rock’s physical presence—often invoked in the TV show through sweeping shots of the neighborhood and wide shots of Hong Kong’s landscape—stood for the belief in having the ability to build a better and more free life in Hong Kong.60 When the Hong Kong Spidie hiker group hung the giant yellow banner, they recalled the well-known narrative about Lion Rock. When standing on top of it after scaling it with ropes and climbing equipment, they sought to embody the metaphorical climb of Hongkongers living in the face of steep diﬃculties and needing group solidarity. Indeed, the leader of the Spidie group says the following in a news interview:

The people fighting for real universal suffrage all over Hong Kong have shown great perseverance. This kind of fighting against injustice, strength in the face of troubles, is the true Lion Rock spirit.61 Although invoking the “Lion Rock Spirit” might be seen as disrespectful to the rule of law or to the imposition of any mainland governance, the appeal presents the protest action in the frame of a local commonplace. One news article covering the event explained the term “Lion Rock Spirit” as “a phrase which has been adopted by Cantonese speakers to encapsulate Hong Kong’s reputation as a place where hard work and perseverance meant a brighter future.”62 Local reporter Rachel Blundy adds detail, saying, “The term was coined after the RTHK television series … It featured stories about the city’s industrious working people. The series took its name from Lion Rock in Kowloon Country Park, which has become symbolic of Hong Kong’s growth.”63 Thus, the protest functioned rhetorically to tie “universal suffrage” to advancing prosperity, expressing a belief that greater political freedom would improve the living conditions in Hong Kong. Proclaiming, as the Chief Executive CY Leung did just before the banner event, that poor people would dominate the democratic vote and lead the region astray, seemed to stir protestors living close to the rock. At that political and discursive moment, the rock, towering over swaths of low wage workers—some living in 10–30 m2 segmented micro apartments—punctured CY’s political claim.64 The rock opened up a possibility for a new doing—a climbing toward the sky—as a live/d theater demonstrating how those who claim governance over the land did not know it very well themselves. Presum- ably, they had forgotten how many families had to (even if they themselves never had to) scale Hong Kong’s social classes starting at the bottom. Hanging the banner had other material implications; namely, it forced the government to remove the banner with firefighters and government officials the next day. The removal required the creation of a whole cast of characters. The government had a “role” to play and needed to perform theatrically in return. Government officials not QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH 461 only had to speak against the message of universal suffrage but also had to physically make it disappear by getting someone to climb up the massive rock. One newspaper highlighted how Twitter users seemed to make fun of officials who scaled the rock “in full uniform!” to remove the banner.65 This act of removal exposed the government’s position more directly—revealing them as visibly against universal suffrage, as well as following in some sense behind the pro-democracy movement, or cleaning up after it. The most viable way to explain the protest action is to say that the Chief Executive spouted a rhetoric so incompatible with the symbolism of Lion Rock that people felt the need to reclaim the meaning of the rock by foregrounding its physical presence. Put differently, the protestors did precisely what the rock itself does—jut out stubbornly from the side of the mountain, proclaim itself across Hong Kong, out in the open, visibly declare how it withstood the hardships of years of erosions and resisted the dredges of time. Protestors seemingly felt the call of the mountain as it loomed over the protest movement. By climbing it, they entered into a performative, symbolic meeting with the materiality of that ruddy and indomitable place. Lion Rock’s immense thereness has always required that the city move around it, literally. Roads and tunnels negotiate its size and heaviness. Though Lion Rock has been summitted, it remains unconquerable. The rock has never been overrun with Hong Kong’s rapid urbanization because it is too steep and difficult. The rock’s visibility and raggedness, the earthly permanence of Hong Kong itself, literally outlasted generations of families in that region, ensuring that Lion Rock would become a long-lived salient symbol.66

Bodies and climbing equipment Videos and news reports celebrated the protestors’ intense physical feat of scaling Lion Rock. Reports noted that protestors hung the banner on Lion Rock’s “highest point” and on the “jagged face” that is “rough and difficult to access.”67 The protestors did so during the day, video-recorded the act, and then released the footage to inspirational Cantonese music associated with dreaming for a better life, using a song called “sky” by a group named “Beyond.”68 The protestors thus dramatized their dissention by entan- gling their physical efforts with the symbolics of the rock. The protest video shows the climber’s ropes, then shots of the strong, muscly legs of the climbers. The viewer sees the intense efforts of digging into the rock and finding the right footings. Halfway through the video, climbers are dangling from the rock, and one loses his grip, shoe slip- ping, searching frantically for a foothold. The music swells just as the climber regains his position and achieves the task. The mini-narrative is a physical performance and a political message to Hongkongers. The viewer watches as climbers work together to release the stunning banner, the yellow fabric unfurls and flaps gloriously in the wind. Only then do viewers see the verbal message: “Universal Suffrage.” With this message comes the panoramic view of the city from atop the rock. And then the viewer absorbs the size of the granite rock itself, which seems strong and majestic, holding the banner in place. In a separate video, apparently designed for release to news reporters, one climber crouches on Lion Rock dressed as the famous superhero Spiderman. Presented in full costume, the protestor appears determined to mask his identity.69 In this setting, the body acts as a synecdoche for the powerful physical presence of Hongkongers and/or for the physical drive to construct a democratic society—which seems, now in retrospect 462 D. R. GRUBER at least, something requiring a truly superhuman feat to achieve. Nevertheless, like the bodies in the video of the banner being hung on the mountain, the body that sits atop the rock and climbs the rock is again shown to be a powerful one; the muscle-suit works to emphasize the strength of his body. And despite the fact that the performance is completed in a fantasy suit, Spiderman’s presumed skill to hang the banner on the rock while dangling from ropes suggests that an actual physical presence—a daring one— underlies the cartoonish muscled superhero body. The suit, in other words, operates in symbolic alignment with the determination of the protestors’ bodies, which also mirrors the materiality of Lion Rock. Moreover, the Spiderman suit positions the lead protestor as the protagonist fighting on the side of the people against the wrongdoers that Spiderman often seeks to vanquish in the comics, namely, those who seek “injustice.” In this way, the protestors stage themselves collectively as hero characters, and Lion Rock becomes the pinnacle from which to watch over the cityscape. However, the fantasy depiction might unwittingly call attention to how the democratic protest had difficulty thriving inside of the hard, political realities of a real world hounded by humans in sharp business suits. The Spiderman suit may then be interpreted as an image of Hongkongers masking their true identities and cowering as they encounter large-scale and well-funded policing apparatuses, which are not at all fiction. In this reading, the crouching Spiderman creates a tension between heroic strength and utter weakness. Whatever the imagery that Spiderman arouses, Lion Rock is a geological formation that “broke” or “punctured” that singular political moment. It participated in making a human-nonhuman assemblage of protest. Something about that rock bothered, tugged, or moved bodies. As one member of the Hong Kong Spidie group says, the group spoke out because they were hikers and climbers; “others can speak out using other means, and in other locations.”70 Presumably, then, their meditations on the rock, their feelings about it, and regular encounters with it initiated their protest and did so well in advance of the actual banner moment. Interestingly, the protestor invokes a causal relation between materiality and subjectivity, that is, the rock’s physical encounter becomes a rumination on its symbolism and then a way of being. The protestor states, “We can find Lion Rocks everywhere, each of us can even be a Lion Rock.”71 In that utterance, materiality and discursivity become embodied in a complex co-formation. For those protestors, Lion Rock is itself a message that anyone can carry or that can be hung anywhere. As theatrical event of dissention, however, the statement expresses more of sentimentalism than of reality. Lion Rock cannot be anywhere or in anyone. With no rock, no banner, and no rappelling performance, Lion Rock could not stand in place of the Umbrella Movement protest or represent its claims or affects. The functional affordances of Lion Rock itself secure its monumental psychological weight and enhance the theatrical event. The height of the rock, for instance, foregrounds the incredible acrobatic leaps and daring lengths that the Umbrella Movement protestors risked in order to strive for the freedom that Spiderman’s wild anti-gravity moves signify. The magnificent views of the city provided from the top of the rock lend protestors an invigorating sense of accomplishment and a sense of superiority, suggesting that they were able to think above the onslaught of rushing noise at the street level. In climbing Hong Kong’s rocks, absorbing the vistas, I can attest to the elevating effects. Looking down on forty story high-rise buildings and millions of people stirring in the streets QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH 463 instigates reflection, invigorates the spirit, and invokes positive and macro-scale thinking about the possibilities of human achievement. Together, the act of climbing, the rock, the costume, the banner, and the message on the banner compose the theatrical event of dissention at precisely the right time. An act of dissention is always a doing with not independent from materiality and broader material- discursive contexts. Although many of the words delivered by the Spidie protest group are undoubtedly rhetorical in every sense—i.e., “The Hong Kong Spidie [protest group] demands the Hong Kong SAR Government to listen to the voices of the Hong Kong people!”72—the “demand to listen” here is capacitated by and strengthened by the bodily act on the rock at that place and time. The message is delivered over a city whose land sits below and flows down from the heights of Lion Rock and then out into the undulating sea.

Conclusion: Relational revisioning for events of dissention Events of dissention as material capacitations do not merely target a singular or easily identifiable antagonist, such as CY Leung. Nor do they simply seek to shift political mes- saging. Rather, events of dissention manifest material conditions and bodily feelings already there, simmering as oppositions to discourses about lived conditions. Because the protest is performed in tandem with environments, the dissent is never only about the demand being publicly presented. The dissent is the place from which the demand arose and how it relates to the hidden weights of everyday life. The Lion Rock protest, as one theatrical event of dissention, turns attention outward: toward Hong Kong’s landscape, toward the poor living beneath the rock, and toward the bodily vigor and affective lives of those youth of Hong Kong who align with the pro-democracy movement. Rocks inevitably foreground history. Like many geological formations, large rocks compel people to ask “How did this happen? How did it get here?” Lion Rock returns Hongkongers to their own histories, materially manifesting and symbolically narrating past struggles and tough political changes. Lion Rock can also draw out other layers, such as historical associations with a broader Chinese culture. Indeed, the lion shape of the rock could be interpreted as a traditional Chinese figure that represents a strong protector of the weak, thus embodying a historical point of cultural identification with China and resistance to the all-encompassing national project simultaneously.73 Lion Rock physically mirrors—in its material history and its shape—the push and pull of Hong Kong against China, wherein Hong Kong exists in a historical and often fore- grounded identification with China while also remaining, at least to some extent, a Special Administrative Region with unique governance features. Lion Rock, typical of all rocks, is admired for enduring so many environmental changes, yet undergoing con- stant environmental change. The rock served, in this instance given the conditions of 2014, as the most viable and sensible place—the most kairotic environment and theatrical stage—from which to puncture the political air. The performance composed with the rock transforms the object into the subject of attention and renewed critique, a point for extended discussion, a presence that must be recognized. The rock becomes again a central node through which to understand and to (re)negotiate power. For example, the lead Hong Kong newspaper, South China Morning Post, produced at least three lengthy follow-up articles 464 D. R. GRUBER specifically about the history of Lion Rock and did so directly in reference to the banner event.74 Thus, the rock becomes prominent in a revised political arrangement, and the salience of the rock intensifies. The rock situated the 2014 banner protest as largely about the historical journey of Hong Kong life. Making visible the rock’s intimate relationships to the street protests below accomplished a renewal of identity and expressed a desire for some agency or some position from which to dialogue with officials about the trajectory of China’s growth and increasing power. By swinging on the old rock of Hong Kong, a rock of shelter and of pride, a rock gleaming in the background of every picture of Kowloon since the invention of photography, the Spidie climbing group successfully opened worlds of sympathetic discourses tied to generations of families. As a result, the protestors likely improved their own ethos and, perhaps, brought the desire to punish them for their dissent to a much lower intensity. In the end, the Hong Kong government ultimately decided not to punish the protestors.75 The government simply removed the banner quickly. Here, it must be noted, the material-discursive relations created new opportunities for the government. By not addressing the banner with strong words (i.e., not making more of the event than necessary), the government operated solely through its own material revisioning. In this case, the choice to remove the banner and to not punish protestors offered a kind of open hand or reversal. Because the initial uncontrolled actions of police officers who fired tear gas toward protestors at the start of the Umbrella Movement created the image of students as victims, at this latter stage of the protest, adopting passive and nonconfrontational actions allowed the government to represent itself as more thoughtful or as changing its approach. Simply removing the banner allowed the government to show an awareness of events, which stood in some juxtaposition to a broader expectation that they would once again administer harsh punishments to those stepping beyond the law. But the government merely re-normalized the landscape. As a strategic response, the officials appeared patient and, possibly, proficient in quickly removing the banner. But in so doing, they also reinforced their message, namely, that they were opposed to forceful declarations of “Universal Suffrage” and hoped to discon- nect Lion Rock from any desire for Hong Kong to become a truly democratic space. In the government’s response, just as in the theatrical event of dissention, there is a lesson about rhetorical engagement that pursues the agency of things and seeks to move analysis beyond the scope of utterances. Rearrangement of the environment can be powerfully advanced to generate protests but can also be turned back on the protestors. Theatrical events of dissention open up new potentials for those working against protestors. The same material formations that undergird such events can capacitate alternative approaches to them. The best scenario, one can hope in any protest movement, is that protestors’ actions lead to a shift in material conditions. However, at a minimum, protests building from the affordances of things in the environment provide new avenues for understanding when and how materiality embeds in lived experience, suggesting starting points for the joint creation of peace. Taking a new materialist approach drawing from a rhetorical tradition deeply invested in ethical relationships and empathetic responses76 must seek to discover how material arrangements make possible what Burke famously calls “identifications”77 across political and social divides. To take a new materialist approach to theatrical events QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH 465 of dissention, then, is to see materiality as opening up possible interventions and to see performance as itself a call for dialogue. A theatrical event of dissention is an identification with the environment asking the party opposed to understand the performance, and in this, the event beseeches another identification. Seen in this way, such events are not inherently divisive but are interventions hoping for unifications. To perform at Lion Rock is to request empathetic reactions to those living in Hong Kong beneath the shadow of what looks to be indomitable and protective. To see Lion Rock as part of the protest in 2014 is to recognize the implications of the rock—its “rug- gedness” applied to everyday life78 and its “difficult but fruitful” path to the top of moun- tain79 as Hongkongers have long known when setting out on the gritty trail, scraping their knees, taking breaks to catch a breath on the way up, and sweating out a shirt in the humid one-hundred-degree heat. A theatrical event of dissention calls attention to the dissent’s origination and the capacities of materiality, and by doing so bodies familiar with the region can more fully feel its import. A new kind of empathy can open up when climbing Lion Rock. The body feels the stress of being outside all day in that terrible heat. For many of the working poor, this is but another physical challenge. Despite the discomfort, life in Hong Kong’s micro apartments do not accommodate a shower, much less a washer and dryer. Starting over or “feeling fresh” are privileges. Indeed, standing atop Lion Rock, one sees so much amazing progress and wealth in the distance yet must reflect on those who, more immediately in the foreground, still only scrape together enough money each day to buy dinner. As Eric Leake notes, there are “social conditions to empathy” and ways of being, thinking, and doing “support or inhibit” empathetic responses.80 Attention to Lion Rock—to the rock itself and to its range—challenges politicians to get outside and to experience the life of those that they govern. The 2014 Lion Rock event offers an opportunity to think again about the role of the landscape in people’s lives and to reassess the political situation in lieu of the specific regional and local history. The event also offers an opportunity, once seen as a kairotic material performance, for rhetorical critics to move beyond rehearsals of discourse when understanding dissention. Lion Rock entreats scholars to see and incorporate, indeed to try out and to feel through, bodies and environments that make political moments possible and to more fully unite the study of material rhetoric with analyses of political dissent.

Notes 1. “Chronology: Timeline of 156 years of British Colonial Rule,” Reuters, June 27, 2007, https:// www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-anniversary-history/chronology-timeline-of-156- years-of-british-rule-in-hong-kong-idUSSP27479920070627. 2. “Hong Kong’s Legal System,” The Government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, last modiﬁed April 8, 2020, https://www.legalhub.gov.hk/eng/hkls.html. 3. Benjamin Haas, “Hong Kong Elects a New Chief Executive: Here’s What You Need to Know,” The Guardian, March 21, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/ 22/hong-kong-chief-executive-election-what-you-need-to-know. 4. Tania Branigan and Jonathan Kaiman, “Tens of Thousands Join Pro-Democracy Protest in Hong Kong,” The Guardian, September 28, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/world/ 2014/sep/28/hong-kong-occupy-central-teargas-police-electoral-limits. 466 D. R. GRUBER

5. Hui Yew-Foong, “The Umbrella Movement: Ethnographic Explorations of Communal Re- spatialization,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 20, no. 2 (2017): 146–61, https://doi. org/10.1177/1367877916683822. 6. Tania Branigan, “Joshua Wong, The Student Who Risked the Wrath of Beijing: ‘It’s About Turning the Impossible Into the Possible,’” The Guardian, May 14, 2017, https://www. theguardian.com/world/2017/may/14/joshua-wong-the-student-who-risked-the-wrath-of- beijing-its-about-turning-the-impossible-into-the-possible; see also James Griffiths, “Joshua Wong: Hong Kong’s Democracy Fighter Gets Netflix Treatment,” CNN, March 24, 2017, https://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/20/asia/joshua-wong-netflix-hong-kong-china/index.html. 7. “Meet ‘Umbrella Man,’ The Symbol of Hong Kong’s Protest Movement,” Special Broadcast- ing Service, October 7, 2014, https://www.sbs.com.au/news/meet-umbrella-man-the- symbol-of-hong-kong-s-protest-movement. 8. During the revision of this manuscript, a new protest movement was sparked in Hong Kong. It remains too early to speak of the means or outcomes; however, I stress the importance of Lion Rock in the 2014 Umbrella Movement and, in turn, note that the political efforts of that year are background needed for grasping current events. 9. See Emma Graham-Harrison, “Leung Chun-ying: The Unprincipled Wolf of Hong Kong or Beijing’s Cipher?” The Guardian, September 30, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/world/ 2014/sep/30/chief-executive-leung-chun-ying-unprincipled-wolf-hong-kong-or-beijing- cipher. Also see David R. Gruber, “A Beijing Wolf in Hong Kong: Lufsig and Imagining Communities of Political Resistance to Chinese Unification,” in Imagining China: Rhetorics of Nationalism in an Age of Globalization, eds. Stephen J. Harnett, Lisa B. Kernanen, and Donovan Conley (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2017), 371–94. 10. See Agence France-Presse, “CY Leung: ‘Democracy Would See Poorer People Dominate Hong Kong Vote,’” South China Morning Post, October 21, 2014, https://www.scmp.com/ news/hong-kong/article/1621103/cy-leung-democracy-would-see-poor-people-dominate- hong-kong-vote. 11. Simplified Chinese characters are used in mainland China; thus, the banner’s inscription in traditional characters was itself a statement, situating it as being from/of Hong Kong. 12. The spelling of “Spidie” here matches the local English news reporting. 13. Clifford Lo, Peter So, and Emily Tsang, “Pro-Democracy Banner Hung from Lion Rock Has Officials Scrambling,” South China Morning Post, October 23, 2014, https://www. scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1622971/pro-democracy-banner-hung-lion-rock-has- officials-scrambling. 14. Lo, So, and Tang, “Pro-Democracy,” 1. 15. Agence-France Presse, “CY Leung,” 1. 16. “Massive Banner on Top of Lion Rock Mountain Declares ‘I Want Real Universal Suffrage,’” Coconuts Hong Kong, October 23, 2014, https://coconuts.co/hongkong/news/massive- banner-top-lion-rock-mountain-declares-i-want-real-universal-suffrage/. 17. Laurel Chor, “Group Claims Responsibility for Lion Rock Banner and Releases Epic Behind- the-scenes Video,” Coconuts Hong Kong, October 24, 2014, https://coconuts.co/hongkong/ news/group-claims-responsibility-lion-rock-banner-and-releases-epic-behind-scenes-video/. 18. See “Lion Rock Banner Memes,” Hong Wrong Blog, 2/2, October 28, 2014, http:// hongwrong.com/tag/video-2/page/2/. 19. Yuen Chan, “The New Lion Rock Spirit — How a Banner on a Hillside Redefined the Hong Kong Dream,” Huffington Post, December 6, 2017, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the- new-lion-rock-spirit-_b_6345212?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29 vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAGuEY7YS0-d-EdWwoptZpA2ISlfldDTxqhoG LzB-bKy8D42rFJb8BCkC6ixJ6g4qgTbxrtiXqIuS8Xck7dtVJQi4ao2LF9u38AZSrh4zBAr1aZ fA65wK_sQXBpGDEStjAifdUXLI6JP6hElf-j_c8F1DhANhK3hrWtIS4-dROUEc. 20. For a discussion of kairos as ambient, see Thomas Rickert, “In the House of Doing: Rhetoric and the Kairos of Ambience,” JAC 24, no. 4 (2004): 904, http://www.jstor.org/stable/ 20866663. 21. See Jonathan Alexander, Susan C. Jarratt, and Nancy Welsh, eds., Unruly Rhetorics: Protest, Persuasion, and Publics (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018). QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH 467

22. Kendall R. Phillips, “The Event of Dissension: Reconsidering the Possibility for Dissent,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 61, https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2015. 994899. For the content of the quotation, see also Robert L. Ivie, “Toward a Humanizing Style of Democratic Dissent,” Rhetoric & Public Aﬀairs 11, no. 3 (2008): 455, https://doi. org/10.1353/rap.0.0061. 23. Phillips, “The Event,” 61. 24. Phillips, “The Event,” 62. 25. Phillips, “The Event,” 63. 26. Phillips, “The Event,” 63. 27. Phillips, “The Event,” 64. 28. Jenny Edbauer, “Unframing Models of Public Distribution: From Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 35, no. 4 (2005): 5–24, https://doi.org/ 10.1080/02773940509391320. 29. For discussion, see Thomas Rickert, Ambient Rhetoric: The Attunements of Rhetorical Being (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013), xii. 30. Jack Seltzer, “Habeas Corpus: An Introduction,” in Rhetorical Bodies, eds., Jack Selzer and Sharon Crowley (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), 11. 31. Kevin Michael DeLuca, “Unruly Arguments: The Body Rhetoric of Earth First!, Act Up, and Queer Nation,” Argumentation and Advocacy 36, no. 1 (1999): 9, https://doi.org/10.1080/ 00028533.1999.11951634. 32. DeLuca, “Unruly,” 10–11. 33. Brett Lunceford, Naked Politics: Nudity, Political Action, and the Rhetoric of the Body (Ply- mouth: Lexington Books, 2012), 1. 34. Lunceford, Naked Politics,2. 35. Lunceford, Naked Politics,3–4. 36. Kristin Marie Bivens and Kristi Cole, “The Grotesque Protest in Social Media as Embodied, Political Rhetoric, ” Journal of Communication Inquiry 42, no. 1 (2017): 21, https://doi.org/ 10.1177/0196859917735650. 37. Bivens and Cole, “The Grotesque,” 21. 38. Karma R. Chávez, “The Body: An Abstract and Actual Rhetorical Concept,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 48, no. 3 (2018): 242, https://doi.org/10.1080/10486801.2015.1049823. 39. Chávez, “The Body,” 247. 40. Quintilian, “Institutio Oratoria. Books I and II,” in Quintilian on the Subject of Speaking and Writing, eds. James J. Murphy (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987), 23–24. 41. Phaedra C. Pezzullo, Toxic Tourism: Rhetorics of Pollution, Travel, and Environmental Justice (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2007), 5. 42. Pezzullo, Toxic,8. 43. Bishnupriya Dutt, “Performing Resistance with Maya Rao: Trauma and Protest in India,” Contemporary Theatre Review 25, no. 3 (2015): 371–85, https://doi.org/10.1080/10486801. 2015.1049823. 44. Christine Hauser, “A Handmaiden’s Tale of Protest,” The New York Times, June 30, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/us/handmaids-protests-abortion.html. 45. The statement recalls Hariman and Lucaties’ discussion of “iconic images,” namely, those “widely recognized and remembered” (27). See: Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites, No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). 46. For more discussion on how ambience is local and able to serve as the capacitation for numerous rhetorics, see Rickert, “In the House of Doing,” 904. Also see Nathan Stormer, “Rhetoric’s Diverse Materiality: Polythetic Ontology and Genealogy,” Review of Communi- cation 16, no. 4 (2016): 299–316, https://doi.org/10.1080/15358593.2016.1207359. 47. William C. Trapani and Chandra A. Maldonado, “Kairos: On the Limits to Our (Rhetorical) Situation,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 48, no. 3 (2018): 278, https://doi.org/10.1080/ 02773945.2018.1454211. Italics added. 468 D. R. GRUBER

48. Pickering presents the idea of ontological theater in the final chapter of his book on cyber- netics. See Andrew Pickering, The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 49. Jim Davis, “Disrupting the Quotidian: Hoaxes, Fires, and Non-Theatrical Performance in Nineteenth-Century London,” New Theater Quarterly 29, no. 1 (2013): 3–4, https://doi. org/10.1017/S0266464X13000018. 50. Brian C.H. Fong, “Hong Kong is at the Forefront of China’sInfluences,” East Asia Forum. August 10, 2018, https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2018/08/10/hong-kong-is-at-the- forefront-of-chinas-influences/; Haas, Ryan, “Why now? Understanding Beijing’s New Assertiveness in Hong Kong,” Brookings. July 17, 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/ order-from-chaos/2020/07/17/why-now-understanding-beijings-new-assertiveness-in-hong- kong/. 51. S. Scott Graham, “Object-Oriented Ontology’s Binary Duplication and the Promise of Thing-Oriented Ontologies,” in Rhetoric Through Everyday Things, eds., Scot Barnett and Casey Boyle (Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 2016), 121. 52. Stormer, “Rhetoric’s Diverse,” 304. 53. See Nathan Stormer and Bridie McGreavy, “Thinking Ecologically About Rhetoric’s Ontol- ogy: Capacity, Vulnerability, and Resilience,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 50, no. 1 (2017): 3, 10. 5325/philrhet.50.1.0001. 54. Nathan Stormer, “Articulation: A Working Paper on Rhetoric and Taxis,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 90, no. 3 (2004): 262–63, https://doi-org/10.1080/0033563042000255516. 55. Brian Cook, “Kowloon City: A Brief History,” Gwulo – Old Hong Kong, May 5, 2014. https:// gwulo.com/node/19851. 56. Elizabeth Sinn, “Kowloon – The ‘Unwalled’ City,” Interflow 50 (1987): 7. 57. Sum Lok-kei, “How the Dark Legacy of the Kowloon Walled City Lives on in Modern-Day Hong Kong,” South China Morning Post, March 23, 2018, https://www.scmp.com/news/ hong-kong/community/article/2138468/how-dark-legacy-kowloon-walled-city-lives-modern- day-hong. 58. Chan, “The New Lion,” para. 8. 59. Chan, “The New Lion,” para. 9. 60. For images from the TV show, see “Below Lion Rock (1972-)”, IMDB, accessed December 10, 2018, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6654108/mediaviewer/rm1178367488. 61. See Lo, So, and Tsang, “Pro-Democracy Banner.” 62. See “Hong Kong Protestors Reach New Heights with Democracy Banner on Lion Rock,” Reuters, October 23, 2014. 63. Rachel Blundy, “Lion Rock Spirit Still Casting its Spell on Hong Kong,” South China Morning Post, April 22, 2017, para 2. 64. For more information on housing conditions in Kowloon, see Benny Lam, “Boxed in: Life inside Hong Kong’s ‘Coffin Cubicles’–In Pictures,” The Guardian, June 7, 2017. 65. See Didi Kristen Tatlow, “A Banner on a Hong Kong Landmark Speaks of Democracy and Identity,” The New York Times, Blog, October 23, 2014. 66. The observation is not to deploy a chicken-egg argument between discourse and materiality but to assert the co-constitutive power of materiality. 67. Lo, So, and Tsang, “Pro-Democracy Banner.” 68. See “Beyond,” Warner Music, YouTube video, June 29, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=2SMDsOYCasc. 69. Note that gender cannot of course be assigned here, but the male pronoun is adopted to connote the Spiderman costume. 70. Chan, “New Lion,” para. 21. 71. Chan, “New Lion,” para. 22. 72. “Up On the Lion Rock,” Lion Rock, Hong Kong Spidie, YouTube video, October 22, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gnLAeuRy_k. 73. See “Stand in the Form of a Crouching Lion,” Art Institute of Chicago, accessed December 1, 2018, https://www.artic.edu/artworks/80898/stand-in-the-form-of-a-crouching-lion. 74. See Blundy, “Lion Rock”; Chan, “The New Lion.” QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH 469

75. Karen Cheung, “Lion Rock Banner Activists Will Not Be Prosecuted, Says Government,” Hong Kong Free Press, September 22, 2015, https://hongkongfp.com/2015/09/22/lion- rock-banner-activists-will-not-be-prosecuted-says-government/. 76. See David L. Wallace and Helen Rothschild Ewald, Mutuality in the Rhetoric and Compo- sition Classroom (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 2000); Eric Leake, “‘Should You Encounter’ The Social Conditions of Empathy,” POROI 14, no. 1 (2018): 1, https://doi. org/10.13008/2151-2957.1265. 77. Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969). 78. Blundy, “Lion Rock,” para. 3. 79. John D. Wong, “Chapter 6: Between Two Episodes of Social Unrest Below Lion Rock: From the 1967 Riots to the 2014 Umbrella Movement,” in Civil Unrest and Governance in Hong Kong: Law and Order from Civil and Cultural Perspectives, eds. Michael H.K. Ng and John D. Wong (New York: Routledge, 2017), 106. 80. Leake, “‘Should You Encounter,’”1.