Introduction

2One evening in January 2014, feminist activists organised an evening in the “youth space” in Beijing. They presented their activist projects, and personal experiences, and held a debate on related issues. Both during the presentations where speakers talked about their own lives, and also during the discussions that followed, most of those who spoke did so with emotion, describing experiences of personal suffering. This was despite the fact that the event —a presentation and debate— and the context, with the audience made up of individuals who did not really know each other, would not have suggested there would be this level of emotional expression. It was not the first time that a high level of emotion was present in this space. Similar things had happened previously during interactions between small groups of two or more individuals, however then it was not in such a broad way, nor in front of an audience. This means of presenting a narrative of suffering in front of an audience, and in a public space, is not, however, a recent phenomenon in the PRC (People’s Republic of China). The sharing of stories called “suku” (诉苦) —literally “story of bitterness”— was the practice of telling “of one’s suffering, or to pour out one’s bitterness, in public” (Sun 2012: 2), which already existed in the 1950s. The aim of this political tool was to help build a “new society” to replace the “old feudal society”, and these practices also helped people identify as a certain social class (Guo & Sun 2002). Subsequently, contemporary practices based on the expression of personal suffering developed in China and elsewhere, based on the idea of putting things into words in the form of a “therapeutic discourse” (Illouz 2006). The same is true of the practice of “tanxin 谈心”—the name literally meaning “speaking from the heart”, or “talking heart to heart”. Used for political purposes, in particular to appease people with complaints, the expression also hints at a dialogue between the state and the masses with the aim of gauging public opinion. This was used in particularly by psycho-social workers as a tool for therapy when working with workers who had been made unemployed, with the purpose of helping them realise their potential for productivity. More broadly, the concept invites us to reconsider the idea that the post-socialist Chinese state is actually more respectful of the boundaries of people’s private space (Yang 2015).

3At the same time, empirical analysis undermines any idea that there is a clear division between public and private spaces. In post-socialist societies in Asia, such divisions have been reduced, notably because public spaces have been used for private purposes, and due to intervention in private spaces by the state and state agents (Yang 2015). In China, this distinction is also undermined by the institutional structure which allows the state to absorb organisations even if they have not directly developed within its remit (Doyon 2019). The interweaving of the public and private spheres is thus rendered more complex by the negotiations between official socialist institutions and private organisations. These interrelationships give the authorities the right, to a greater or lesser extent, to inspect and observe local initiatives, depending both on the local situations as well as the broader political context (Thireau 2013).

4In this context, actors use different tactics (De Certeau 1980: 60–63) to be less visible to the authorities who are behind the network of measures of control, and also to render discourse accessible to a public outside the inner circles of the social movements (Mathieu 2012). But how do these more everyday forms of resistance function? And how can we understand them in relation to the surveillance practices put in place by the public authorities? How can we analyse the subtle practices which are also used as tactics to contest, distract or penalise the relationships of majority power? And, finally, given this context, what should we make of the situation on the ground as described above?

5In situations where numerous regulations govern social space, there also exist strategies which do not dismantle the political load as such, but which limit its potential to make an overly sensitive impact. One such strategy is the framing of emotions. There are two aspects to working through emotions. On the one hand, this strategy enables a discussion to be framed by means of individual narratives that focus on specific types of emotionality. In doing so, it partially diffuses the political charge which might be produced in the spaces in question. We can thus advance the hypothesis that in social spaces which are subject to focused attention from public institutions, the biographical narrative and the framing of situations which happen in particular through emotions allow us to see control and resistance as being one and the same. To support this idea, we will first show how these “youth spaces” exemplify the pluralisation of leisure practices and spaces, while demonstrating the reinforcement of personal narratives, and also serving as spaces with a high level of social regulation. In the face of the state’s right to inspection, the reliance on personal narratives and repeating of emotions indicate a dual task. For as the process mitigates the political charge of the narratives while reassuring the public authorities, it also makes it possible for commonalities between different narratives to come to the fore. This is a point which we will develop in the second part of the article.

Public space, young graduates’ personal narratives, and the regulation of social space

Young graduates, the pluralisation of leisure practices, and personal narratives

6In the “youth spaces”, the location for our fieldwork, two processes are highlighted that are currently happening in China: on the one hand, a pluralisation in leisure practices and spaces for these, and, on the other, the strengthening of personal narratives. These leisure spaces were established as places dedicated to non-productive time, and were intended in particular to be spaces for self-expression. The sharing of experiences, especially people’s professional and personal experience, is at the heart of the youth space mission and is particularly informed by the sociology of the groups in question.

Public space and social regulation

9The “youth spaces” have certain features; for example, they are open to a wide audience, theoretically accessible to everyone, and their events are visible publicly (indeed the activities of the “youth space” in Beijing are advertised via its page on the Douban website and the content of some events is transcribed in detail). These characteristics, and the socialisations that take place in these spaces, go beyond what Hannerz (1980) described as “minimal interactions” in urban areas. In this sense, this is an argument for categorising these as public spaces if we follow the basic definition of an intermediate domain between nation state and private sphere (Habermas 1988; Honneth 2015). This definition, however, is not watertight as it encompasses a large number of situations and indeed the term itself has a certain polysemy. Moreover, the principal Habermassian conceptualisation has also been widely questioned, particularly as it is exclusionary in many respects, and thus both elitist and gendered (Fraser 1992). Others have thus transcended this framework by proposing conceptualisations such as oppositional public space (Negt 2007) or plebeian public spaces (Breaugh 2013). The key here is above all not to assume that public space is a neutral space where situations simply happen, but instead we must take a dynamic approach with respect to the actions and experiences that form and play out in a space (Capitant & Leclerc-Olive 2013).

13These institutional links become visible through the approaches made by recognised public organisations, and they attest to relationships that reflect both a sort of complicity and invisible competition. They also reveal the desire of public bodies to regulate these spaces. At the same time, it is not possible to contemplate these social spaces without taking these regulations into account, unless we erase the subjective dimensions of the actors present. It was for this reason that Wang Shaoguang (1995) considered private time and leisure spaces as a political issue on the grounds that control and resistance come to a head in these spaces and temporalities, and are negotiated there.

Political control and resistance: The dual work of emotions

14The analysis of emotions is increasingly important in the social sciences (Hochschild 1979, 1997; Illouz 2006; Yang 2014, 2015) and also in analyses of social factors which regard emotions as constituent parts of social processes rather than mere physiological impulses (Hochschild 1997). Moreover, emotion can allow us to question some of these processes and to better understand an actual situation on the ground (Pettier 2016). The fact that there is surprise in the face of people’s public displays of emotion in the spaces we are studying here allows us to question processes which might otherwise be neglected, and thus to understand the role and dynamics which these emotions play in relation to public experience. This is a space where people have the right to self-expression (Bhabha 2003) and where narratives of suffering are becoming more common (Illouz 2006; Yang 2014, 2015). In this context, the emotions that accompany people’s sharing of their personal narratives mark the fact that these individuals are affected by something which is identified as being “social” (Martuccelli 2017). They thus blur the clear distinction between public and private affairs, and also between biographical and intimate narratives on the one hand, and public or social issues on the other. Different distinctions between affect and emotion have been put forward. The former can be seen as falling within the field of intense bodily sensations, and the capacity to be moved by something while the latter falls in the field of narrative and feelings which are presented socially (Massumi 2002: 35–36). Methodologically, however, it is difficult to grasp this distinction through ethnographic observations (White 2014: 101), and so we prefer to use “emotion” or “affect” in a generic way, in the sense of a bodily or somatic manifestation without which nothing is left “but a cold and neutral intellectual state” (Dechaux 2015).

15Finally, it is difficult to view emotions about politics in an objective way and this prevented such emotions from being included in analyses until they began to be considered more broadly, starting from the 2000s (Jasper 2011). Researchers have also pointed to the heuristic aspect of the analysis here, more generally as an element to be mobilised rather than as an element of mobilisation in social movements (Latté 2015). In their political work, intermediary organisations, political parties, trade unions, and associations can thus give meaning to these emotions, either to get people to act in a certain way (Sommier 2015) or by serving as a “device to raise awareness” (Traïni 2009). Conclusions of this nature also invite us to consider possible links between emotions and politics in the present case. Do they also serve as a “device to raise awareness”? Here the answer seems less clear-cut.

Biographical narratives and transformation of action frames

It’s about 7.00 pm. There are a surprising number of people present this Saturday evening in the “youth space”. The Chinese New Year holiday has begun, the neighbourhood has emptied out. Yet the living room is full. There are chairs everywhere, with even more people standing at the back. At a guess, there’s about forty or fifty people, with slightly more women than men. On the program this evening are some young feminist activists who have come to present the themes of their struggles and their means of action. This is supposed to be followed by a discussion. As usual, the people here seem to be roughly between 20 and 35 years old. [...] Four of them have come to make presentations. They first show a video about feminism, and then some photos of collective protests by different feminist groups in China, and they end by referring to Pussy Riot. The young women on the “stage” —although there is no actual, physical stage— speak one after the other, talking for different amounts of time, presenting their personal journeys, including certain events that, one imagines, they have selected out of a range of other experiences. The responses that follow from the audience also offer an opportunity for people to present personal stories (Excerpt from field notes, 11 January 2014).

16These personal narratives which are presented in front of an audience should be seen in the current context of people’s right to narrate, to use Homi Bhabha’s phrasing, or their enunciative right. That is,

the dialogical right to address and be addressed, to share meaning and be interpreted, to speak and to be heard, to make a sign and to know that one will receive respectful attention (Bhabha 2003: 34).

17The words of the first woman, an activist from a Cantonese lesbian women’s rights organisation, evoke a family scene, more than twenty years ago, in an average city in central China.

• 12 This excerpt, and those that follow, are all transcripts of discussions which happened that evening

I was born into that family, into this family where the birth of a daughter was not what was expected. Some parents would have preferred to have a boy, but can adapt to having a little girl. Not mine. The storm caused by the birth of a female has not subsided over time. My mother got many comments, more or less vicious, blaming her for this birth. It was so much that she almost left the family home when I was little, almost leaving everything behind, including me. In the end she stayed, and that was the atmosphere I grew up in. Nonetheless I was still able to go to university, and in those years, I started to become conscious of this profound injustice, this chaos, and what did I have to thank for this, in fact? The fact that I was born a girl. […] 12

My uncles and aunts all had daughters. My grandfather absolutely wanted to have a grandson. The whole family was only waiting for this one thing. So it was as if I wasn’t born, like I didn’t exist... The family pressure remained the same, from my grandfather to my parents, from them to me. It was this pressure that pushed me to get involved.

19The further she gets in telling her story, the harder she finds it. She can’t get her words out sometimes, and she’s on the edge of tears. A third woman speaks next. She is a member of Beijing’s gay centre, co-founder of a feminist film festival and an activist against domestic violence, but again, none of these aspects of her biography are mentioned. Then, it is the audience’s turn to speak. A first young woman immediately stands up in the middle of the group of forty people. She starts by thanking the speakers for sharing their personal stories, photos, actions, and for the way in which this resonates with her own current situation. She’s originally from a small town; her father is an accountant and her mother a teacher. She is 34 years old and has a bachelor’s degree in management. Despite pressure from those around her she is not married. Not because she hasn’t met anyone yet, but because she feels fulfilled by her work and so that takes up a lot of time; because she feels fine like this... adding that it doesn’t really matter. “But it’s hard. And tonight’s comments make me feel less alone, less isolated, and actually, even quite legitimate”. The other comments are of a similar ilk.

22The decision to focus on biographical stories thus did not happen by accident. This tactic makes it possible to focus again on the private and individual sphere, coming back to issues that otherwise might be considered a public or collective matter. The audience are not surprised by how the evening turns out. Indeed, the online description of that evening’s event clearly indicated that the exchange will centre on the personal stories of each participant:

• 16 Excerpt from the presentation of the evening. The emphasis is our own.

They will come to share their understanding of this with everyone, but in the knowledge that we are not in a classroom here; there is no higher authority, but rather the idea is for discussions to touch everyone starting from our personal experiences.16

23By emphasising personal stories instead of the four guests’ work as activists, the organisers help transform the frames of the action. Indeed, the primary framework here —i.e., what makes it possible in a given situation to render “what would otherwise be a meaningless aspect of the scene into something that is meaningful” (Goffman [1974]: 30)— is that of a debate on the definition of feminism. The transformation takes place within the possible “protest” aspect of the interactions. The young women who are speaking are indeed recognised activists, and all come from a network formed on the basis of struggles and mobilisations and it is for this reason that they have been invited. These women, like the organisers, are members of the “youth space”, and they are exhausted by their experience of political constraints and censorship and of the multi-layered task of adapting, redefining their actions and terms and how these are presented. Together with the organisers, the women have steered the evening in a direction in accordance with these political constraints. The frames are thus transformed in the sense that, although the situation bears a certain resemblance to what is happening in the primary frame, it also acquires a different meaning. In the situation presented here, the discussion centring on personal experiences is not only an exchange per se. It is also a means both of keeping the public authorities at a distance and, hypothetically, reassuring the authorities as to what is happening in these spaces. The organisers and speakers are not powerful enough to shape people’s emotions. However, by centring biographical narratives amongst the stories of collective actions, and by pointing out the sufferings in these biographies, both the organisers and speakers create a frame for the action that enables the political burden to be reduced.

Political sensitivity, “emotional management” and emotional framing of discussions

24Since the 1980s, there has been a renewed emphasis on discourse which focuses on the narrative of one’s own suffering, in particular through support groups, television shows, interest in therapy, etc. As these events became more commonplace, narratives of suffering have evolved into a means of self-expression and expressing one’s feelings (Illouz 2006: 106), and this is the type of storytelling which prevails here. Issues of politics, collective action and theory related to feminism are not mentioned much in the debate following the presentations. Instead, the discussion centres on people’s expressions of their personal suffering related to gender and gender inequalities. After the activists’ presentations, and following the contribution of the first 34-year-old woman, a second woman speaks:

• 17 We have highlighted the two utterances in italics.

Well, as for me, I probably won’t talk too much about myself, I mean not too much about my personal experience. But I want to say something here because I am moved tonight by what you have all shown us. There were those pictures of women in black T-shirts who were protesting against violence against women. And you quickly mentioned some numbers, and the presentation, and then, well, for me all this —it makes me feel something.17 Seeing this, I realise that I’ve not been paying attention to it before, but I must have met loads of women who suffered domestic violence during my life. Maybe even..., I mean, I don’t really know how to explain it, but now, when I think about it now, after listening to you, it seems to me that I’ve also suffered discrimination because I was a girl, a woman, and it’s just that I didn’t think about it before, I... That’s all.

25In the spaces in question, the frame in which emotions are expressed is not benign. It may border on “emotional management” (Hochschild 1979) —that is to say, a set of actions that involve highlighting or also silencing certain feelings in order to make them appropriate to a situation. This management happens in the situation and demonstrates a relationship with the space which fundamentally differentiates between actions within the “youth spaces” and those outside. It is thus possible to recognise two time frames in the presentation. First, there is the presentation of collective actions in which the four activists participated, which mostly happened in public space. One of the photos shows seven young women seen from behind (see Figure 1). Each of them has attached a Chinese character to the back of their black T-shirt, with the seven characters together making up the phrase “Zero tolerance for domestic violence”. Photos of other group actions are also shown. The actions of the four activists presented in the first phase relate to situations in which their negative emotions were one of the things that inspired them to participate in collective action. These actions are spurred on by a process of conversion, or “emotional management”, whereby negative affects —such as anger or shame— are transformed into an incentive for action (Gould 2002).

26The second phase centres on the presentation of the personal stories of each speaker, and here we find another process of “emotional management” at work. The demonstration of the collective protests is very brief, and quickly shifts into biographical narratives and the demonstration of suffering. Here the earlier process is now reversed. The anger which has inspired collective protests amongst other things must now be converted into statements drawing on a register of sadness or other negative emotions that are assumed to provide less of an incentive for action. Far from being spontaneous outbursts, the affect here therefore indeed relates to constructed social processes. In this context, the construction helps frame the situation and thereby mitigate any political sensitivity that such a presentation might otherwise have.

Well I think what I want to say here is different again. If I’ve understood right, you say that seeing these photos, and the big topics that are being addressed here, that these are things we do not hear much about normally, at least I’m saying what I thought I understood you to say, so this is both something which makes you feel things, and at the same time maybe makes you ask yourself questions. So yes, there’s that, but for me there’s also the fact that I’ve heard all four of you talk about your personal stories. Each of them was different, and four may not be a huge number, but together it inevitably raises questions. For myself, I could identify with certain parts of your story, and others in yours. And then with other things I didn’t so much. But it resonated in some ways, and that’s, hmm, that’s already something, right.

28In these two contributions we find social themes —here domestic violence or discrimination against women in particular— being interwoven with biographical experience. Biographical narratives are not a means of shutting down the debate on the individual. On the contrary, such stories are a part of political and social issues. Telling such stories in front of an audience thus marks a moment when the masks come off (Freire 2017). The uniqueness of one individual’s journey is affirmed and activated when combined and contrasted with other stories from the audience. The acts of observing a collective, shedding light on discriminations, and coming back to individual experiences are thus intertwined. The use of self-narrativity also becomes a way to weave together different continuums with these public issues. They represent an “implicating affectivity” (Martuccelli 2017), that is to say, the ability to be concerned and affected by social issues in a personal way.

30The presence of emotions in public is surprising at first, and it attests to a double process. The public aspect of these spaces is constructed around collective activities, particularly those that are rooted in social and political issues, and this could make the event politically sensitive. By framing narratives in terms of emotions it is possible to mitigate the sensitive nature of the topics, while in other situations the same processes might function more as “tools for raising awareness”. At the same time, by coding issues in terms of biography and emotions, we can see what different stories have in common. This study focuses on spaces where activists from different movements can exchange and connect with each other, but in these venues they can also connect with people who are less involved, and the shared language revolves around topics of civic engagement and general interest. As such, the collective thus functions as a kind of body that can offer approval —although this will vary depending on the members and situation— allowing for a sort of production linked with issues of the “common good” (Pharo 1985). Links are made in these spaces between activists and those who are less involved, and this thus points to the idea that the range of what is “sayable” is expanded within a context where social and political relations are being revealed. Besides these outbursts of an illegitimate nature, these different actors forge connections through discussions that represent forms of “ordinary civicism” (Pharo 1985). “Civicism” here is not a synonym for “good citizens” or even an integrated subject. Rather, it is a question of seeing these small intrusions as attempts to join the debate on social or political issues, and as a way of expressing one’s subjectivity and presence in a public sphere. There is, then, a shift between the boundaries of what is and is not political. While the concepts of “civicism” or “citizenship” may have been overused as they have instrumentalised for political ends, they are still nonetheless useful for reconsidering and shifting the boundaries of what is and is not politics, and even for reinvigorating the political sense behind civic forms whose meaning has been obscured (Murard & Tassin 2006).

Conclusion

31The clear division between public and private space does not stand up in the face of the empirical data, but it is particularly striking how the two are interwoven in contemporary China. The socialist institutions’ attempts to regulate social space are not ubiquitous, and they do not succeed every time, but they nonetheless serve to remind us of the strong presence of political controls. Even if we are not in a “public space” in that term’s most basic sense, or in the sense of Habermas —hereby political issues are present albeit in an elitist and gendered way— the authorities’ control and right to inspect social practices are important. These two elements —namely the interference in private and public spaces on the one hand, and the authorities’ right to inspect and control matters on the other— constitute precautions and strategies for circumvention which can be used in situations of a political nature. In the situation presented here, emotions are particularly present.

32Far from being an innocuous element of these interactions, the emotions rather serve as an aspect of strategies for circumvention. First, they make it possible to obscure the fundamentally political nature of certain discourses by refocusing narratives on individual suffering, while simultaneously reassuring the public authorities as to what is happening in these spaces. Emotions also help reinforce the resonances between individual narratives and public problems. As such, they highlight the importance of the physical space of the gathering, and therefore the possibility to meet and for bodies to be present together and share experiences where the most important thing is to “do it together” (Thireau 2020). It is therefore important to consider the simple fact of being together, even without taking into account the effect of the words and speech (Butler 2015), in order to take account of the sensitive aspect in public spaces.

The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions, and Joanna Britton²⁰ who took care of the English translation of this article.