Asia Theories Network – “Field Report” 

Li-Chun Hsiao, Oscar V. Campomanes, Alex Taek-Gwang Lee, Hung-chiung Li 

14 December 2023
12-1.30pm
Online 

As part of our series, ‘What is Global Critical Theory?’, Goldsmiths Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought (CPCT) hosts a roundtable with colleagues from the Asia Theories Network (ATN) surveying their work and critical theory in Asia. 

REGISTER HERE to get the zoom link! 

Contact: jacob.mcguinn[@] gold.ac.uk 

About the talk 

The series of short presentations we put together here can be considered, to a necessarily limited extent (yet one that, we hope, still warrants critical attention), a “state of the field” report on the studies of “critical theory” based in Asia, in conjunction with the studies of the epistemological, cultural, and socio-political changes and possibilities of Asia undertaken by scholars of Asia Theories Network (ATN) or those we connect with or know of through ATN. Acutely cognizant of the malleability of the umbrella term “critical theory” as well as the variety of existing schools of thought (Deleuzian, postcolonialist, etc.) and disciplines we may be associated with (or the lack of neatly fit categories), we proceed with no more than a loosely conceived (critical) “theory” as our common denominator, on the basis of which we seek to push the envelope of the productions of theoretical knowledge about and around Asia by means of connecting with, and learning from, multiple sites or nodal points of theoretical interventions. The aforementioned practices and vision(s) of theoretical inquiry can be illustrated by Critical Asia Archives: Events and Theories, which is a bi-annual online publication platform created in 2020 by ATN and co-edited by Li-Chun Hsiao and Hung-chiung Li, with members of the editorial board or guest editors outside ATN taking turns to curate special topics focused on one specific site of theoretical engagement (e.g. Taiwan, Japan, etc.). In the first presentation, Hsiao and/or Li will elaborate, in light of the Hong Kong topics, on how new horizons of critical thought not only can be precipitated by monumental events, as is usually the case, but also by the end of any prospect of such events.

As the coordinator of ATN’s participation in this Global Critical Theory Seminar at Goldsmiths, Hsiao will introduce and reflect on the contexts in which the local groundwork of ATN was laid, and through the lends of which two iterations of our recent work can be understood: The first is the historical “moment of critical theory” in these parts of Asia that coincided with the waves of democratization movements sweeping across South Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan in the 1980s. The second context didn’t emerge until after a time lapse in which critical theory evolved as a branch of institutionalized knowledge; to many of us, it is this keen awareness of and the discontent with critical theory’s status as “just another specialty” that brought us together and formed Asia Theories Network in the first place. The second presentation, by Alex Taek-Gwang Lee, will discuss the ideas around the June 2023 “Global Authoritarianism” conference he organized, in collaboration with ATN and other organizations, which explored, among other things, the specter of authoritarianism that can serve as both enabler and disabler of critical-theoretical inquiries and interventions. In the third presentation, Oscar Compomanes, who is the chief organizer of the ATN workshop on “the University,” held in Manilla on December 4-7 this year, will report and reflect on the visceral double threats of shrinking thought horizons inside the university as well as the eroded freedoms outside it, particularly in the Philippines. Finally, in the context of the intellectual endeavors by ATN outlined above, Li will introduce and discuss an edited volume of critical essays, titled Entangled Waterscapes in Asia, which, featuring contributions from a number of ATN members, is co-edited by Li and Kwai-Cheung Lo. 

About the speakers

Li-Chun Hsiao (Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, SUNY Buffalo) is Professor at Waseda University in Tokyo, specializing in postcolonial studies, literary and cultural theories, Taiwan literature and culture, and Anglophone Caribbean literatures. He was the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Chung Wai Literary Quarterly from 2015 to 2017, and current serves as co-editor-in-chief of Critical Asia Archives. Having been a visiting scholar at Hitotsubashi University (2017-18) and UCLA (2011-12), Hsiao is the author of the monographs The Soldier-Writer, the Expatriate, and Cold War Modernism in Taiwan: Freedom in the Trenches. (Lexington Books, 2022) and The Indivisible Globe, the Indissoluble Nation: Universality, Postcoloniality, and Nationalism in the Age of Globalization (ibidem, 2021). He has book chapters collected in the edited volumes Keywords of Taiwan Theory (Unitas 2019), Comparatizing Taiwan (Routledge 2015) and Representing Humanity in an Age of Terror (Purdue UP 2010), and his papers have been published by Critical Arts (2020), Chungwai Literary Quarterly (2014), Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies (2010), CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture (2009), and M/MLA Journal (2008), among other journals. 

Oscar V. Campomanes (PhD in American Civilization from Brown University) is Associate Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies, the Department of English, and holds the Rev. James F. Donelan SJ Professorial Chair in the Humanities, the Loyola Schools, Ateneo de Manila University. He was ASEAN University Network (AUN) Distinguished Visiting Professor in American Studies at Vietnam National University-Hanoi in 2001-02, and Visiting Scholar in the Division of Cultural Studies, Department of Religious and Cultural Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, in 2020, Term 2. Recent publications include the essay on Filipino visual arts for SANGHAYA: Philippine Culture and the Arts Yearbook 2020 (Cultural Center of the Philippines, 2021), and an extended essay on the Filipino American Marxist writer Carlos Bulosan in Mari Jo Buhle et al., Eds., Encyclopedia of the American Left (Verso, 2022). The book he co-edited with the Filipinist economic historian Yoshiko Nagano and anthropologist Nobutaka Suzuki, Colonialism and Modernity: Re-Mapping Philippine Histories, has just been published by Ateneo de Naga University Press (2022).

Alex Taek-Gwang Lee is a professor of cultural studies and a founding director of the Center for Technology in Humanities at Kyung Hee University, Korea. He is a visiting professor at the University of Brighton and was invited as a visiting professor at the Centre for Culture Media and Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia University, India. He served as an academic adviser for Gwangju Biennale in 2017 and as a program manager for the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2021. He is a board member of The International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs (ICCTP) and Asia Theories Network (ATN). He edited the third volume of The Idea of Communism (2016) and Deleuze, Guattari and the Schizoanalysis of Postmedia (2023). He published articles in journals such as Telos, Deleuze and Guattari Studies and Philosophy Today, and chapters in The Bloomsbury Handbook of World Theory (2021), Thinking with Animation (2021), Back to the ’30s?: Recurring Crises of Capitalism, Liberalism and Democracy (2020) and Balibar/Wallerstein’s “Race, Nation, Class”: Rereading a Dialogue for Our Times (2018).

Hung-chiung Li is Associate Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at National Taiwan University, Taiwan. He is also Co-Coordinator of the Asia Theories Network, and founding Co-Editor-in-Chief of Critical Asia Archives. He has been the vice president of the Comparative Literature Association of the Republic of China (Taiwan), and the editor-in-chief of Chung Wai Literary Quarterly. His research interest includes critical theory, comparative literature, and Taiwanese and East Asian cultures and thoughts.