Daily Performance of Insanity: New Resistance Repertoires in Chinese Lockdowns

• In Event: Why Citizens Engage in Protest and Activism

Abstract

How and why do citizens express their dissent under an increasingly repressive context in authoritarian regimes? Through an analysis of the evolution of resistance repertoires on Chinese university campuses during COVID lockdowns, this article theorizes an innovative repertoire, dramatic daily resistance. Unlike conventional forms of resistance, such as protests and hunger strikes, dramatic daily resistance presents a routine mode of action with insanity and abnormality. Drawing on online ethnography and interviews with student dissenters who made cardboard dogs, joined crawling, and produced “insane literature” online, this article reveals that dramatic daily resistance, as an unconventional form of mobilization, blurs the boundary between collective resistance and individuals’ self-entertaining behaviours. Unlike everyday resistance, this tactical innovation helps to attract media attention and signal their dissent through symbolic deviance from the state’s policies with its insanity. Meanwhile, though the relatively low cost of adopting this repertoire would increase its mobilization and lower the likelihood of repression, the implicit demands accompanied might lead to authorities' underestimation of dissenters’ extent of grief and confusion in their intentions, thereby significantly limiting the repertoire’s ability to achieve concession. The findings foster a more nuanced understanding of covert resistance under an authoritarian context.

Authors

• Ruijie Liu, Oxford University

• Yuhan Hu, University of Oxford