Abstract
This article studies the immaterial labor of Fang Fang’s Wuhan diary about the Wuhan COVID-19 lockdown time period, Jan 23 to Apr 8, 2020 (her diary ran from Jan 25 to Mar 24). Guided by social justice-informed, critically contextualized methodology, this analysis examines how the rhetoric of Fang Fang’s diary as tactical communication contributed to enacting social justice during the Wuhan lockdown by recognizing, revealing and rejecting oppressions people experienced both due to the challenges of the pandemic outbreak and the government’s inadequate and problematic responses. In doing so, Fang Fang uses her own positionality and privilege to challenge problematic ways political, social, economic, and cultural power dynamics temper knowledge production and circulation thus shaping relief efforts during the Wuhan lockdown. I argue that public diaries are an important genre that can serve to enact social justice during crisis contexts and can make salient the ramifications of sociocultural and political forces on individual bodies. I end with a discussion of implications for future research on public pandemic diaries as a tactical communication genre.
Recommended Citation
Chen, Chen
(2022)
"The Communicative and Affective Labor of Public Pandemic Diaries: The Case of Fang Fang’s Wuhan Diary,"
Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization: Vol. 11
:
No.
1,
Article 5.
Available at:
https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/rpcg/vol11/iss1/5