雨傘運動後的流感隱喻及其來源

This article examines the metaphor of influenza after the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong in 2014. With reference to the metaphor of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), this article draws on the metaphor to discuss the political predicament of Hong Kong, as well as the intensely conflicting China-Hong Kong relationship in contemporary time.By recapitulating the theories on illness as metaphor, this article will offer a critical study of both the pathological knowledge and historical materials to analyze influenza as metaphor in contemporary Hong Kong. The second part of this article will not only delineate the common characteristics of the metaphor of influenza, but also shed light on the specificities of such metaphor in the context of Hong Kong in two ways: (1) the metaphor of influenza is particularly deployed to account for the “China-Hong Kong conflict”; (2) such metaphor is inseparably linked to the metaphor of SARS. For the remaining parts, the article will explicate the discursive process of the metaphor of SARS that has been often referred to the metaphor of influenza. It argues that the metaphor of influenza can be understood as an “inheritance” of the metaphorof SARS, with modification and appropriation. Rather than referencing to the diachrony, the metaphor of influenza usually aligns the binary opposition of“center/periphery” with the one of “illness/health”, while it has frequently used“exclusion” and “segmentation” as the remedy for such dilemma. Finally, thisarticle looks into how the metaphor of influenza has developed in the context of “local consciousness”. It concludes that the metaphor reiterates stereotypes of the China-Hong Kong conflict through essentializing the “illness” of mainland Chinese, thereby legitimizing the China-Hong Kong segregation. The legitimacy of such segregation implies the potential violence against the mainland Chinese and may become a coercive trial and punishment forindividuals.