SUVANNABHUMI (수완나부미)

Korea Institute for ASEAN Studies (부산외대 아세안연구원)
권호 표지

Affective-discursive Practices in Southeast Asia: Appropriating emotive roles in the case of a Filipina domestic helper in Hong Kong who fell to her death while cleaning windows

  • Aguirre, Alwin C. (University of the Philippines)
  • Received : 2017.04.17
  • Accepted : 2017.06.08
  • Published : 2017.06.30
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Abstract

The paper demonstrates the potential contribution of integrating discursive and affective analytic regimes in framing the study of Southeast Asia. I examine the "emotional possibilities" available to migrants with particular focus on the experience of Filipino domestic helpers in Hong Kong thrown into relief in 2016 by news of maids falling to their deaths while cleaning windows of their employers' above-ground apartments. First, I situate the study in recent calls for Critical Discourse Studies and Migration Studies to transcend foundational methodologies in their respective fields in order to apprehend formerly disregarded aspects of the human condition, including affect and emotion. I then briefly present the debate in the affective turn in social analysis, which has to do with rethinking the attachment of affect and discourse. My own inquiry is premised on the assertion that emotion is multidimensional. I specifically explore the usefulness of taking emotion as "affective-discursive practice" by focusing on an analysis of the appropriation of the victim role by foreign domestic helper employer groups that could be seen in pertinent news reports of selected online Hong Kong newspapers. In the end, I also emphasize the necessity of reflexivity in projects that take affect as central object of inquiry.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This paper is part of a larger research project on identity work of Filipino migrants in Hong Kong and Internet-based media, which received a PhD Incentive Award under the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Development, University of the Philippines Diliman. I am grateful for their support.

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