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This study revisits the concept of anxiety and affective dimensions through an analysis of social media related to affordable housing property in Hegang, a small city located in the northeastern part of China. We build on Calum Matheson's reconceptualization of anxiety as arising from networks of affective investment along with Sara Ahmed's concept of the sociality of emotions and Lauren Berlant's notion of cruel optimism. The essay sees rhetorical anxieties as affective vacillations from constant adaptions to an impasse caused by the polarizing effect of a rising neoliberal order, manifested as shifted orientations toward objects of desire and happiness. Constant vacillations may lead to a state of restlessness where anxiety is sedimented to routines and thus recedes to the background, making anxiety ambivalent in shape and unpredictable in trajectory. Viewing rhetorical anxieties as affective vacillations offers insights into their manifestations as anxious encounters and constant affective (re)investments. This reimagination of anxiety has implications on both theoretical inquiries of rhetorical anxieties as affects and practical understandings of the rise of the recent youth counternarratives in China.
Zhang et al. (Fri,) studied this question.
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