弱情感與「新冷戰」：美中臺地緣政治衝突下的網路迷因與中介情感

Weak Affect and the“New Cold War”: Internet Memes and Mediating Affect under Geopolitical Conflicts between the United States, China, and Taiwan

全球新型冠狀病毒疫情以及烏俄戰爭，使得近年來將中國與美國之間的「新冷戰」論述升級，在人文研究主導的領域中，「新冷戰情感結構」也慣性被使用為分析臺灣地緣政治與主體經驗的視角，將「反中親美」的框架視為既定的情感事實。依循酷兒理論家賽菊蔻所提出批判理論「偏執閱讀」傾向的提醒，以及心理學家湯普金斯對於情感多方向可能的觀點，筆者主張新冷戰情感結構作為一項偏執情感的分析架構，不僅容易將尚待商榷的「新冷戰」收納為既定系統的事實來分析，更難以突顯臺灣內部情感的多元空間與異質性。本文分析網路迷因如何在「反抗中國」（反中）與「反對仇恨中國」（反反中）的情感之間，生產「弱情感」的文化表現，將愛恨兩者極端的情感轉化為一種嘲諷式幽默。有別於新冷戰情感結構，本文主張利用弱情感的分析，更能理解在中美對峙之下，人們如何將高度緊張的政治事。經由迷因的高速情感傳播力以及創意的再造，提供一種低度的政治回應與共感可能。

The COVID-19 pandemic and Russia-Ukraine war have escalated“new Cold War”narratives about US-China competitive relations. However, whether we have entered into a new Cold War era is still undergoing scholarly debate. Within cultural studies in Taiwan, a“structure of feeling”of the new Cold War has become a dominant paradigm for analyzing Taiwan’s affective geopolitics as either firmly“anti-China”or“pro-US.”Drawing from queer theorist Eve Sedgwick’s analysis of“paranoid reading”and psychologist Silvan Tomkins’articulation of affect, I examine a middle range of emotions with lower intensity—“weak affect”—beyond“love”and“hate”that circulate in the popular media genre of political memes. I argue that the ambivalent feelings mixed with mistrust, ambivalence, and humor in these political memes serve as a form of low intensity political responses that alleviate the daily anxiety of the Taiwanese public.