The question “Can Asians Critique?” serves as the point of departure for this special issue, not as a provocation concerning intellectual capability, but as an invitation to re-examine the historical formation, conceptual boundaries, and enduring possibilities of critique itself. At stake is not the inclusion of Asian thinkers within a pre-existing canon of critical theory, but the conditions under which critique has been defined, institutionalised, and geographically delimited within dominant philosophical traditions. In particular, this question compels us to reflect on the extent to which Asia has been structurally excluded from, and yet continues to preserve, the potential for critical thought beyond its marginalisation.

This essay offers a critical examination of the development of South Korean feminism in cyberspace since 2015, reconceptualizing it as a political project that I refer to as “digital feminism.” The popularization of feminism in South Korea over the past decade has witnessed the formation of online women’s groups, such as Megalia and Womad, the founding of the South Korean Women’s Party, and countless conflicts triggered by hashtag activism. Indeed, feminist organizing in South Korea in the past ten years has been a complex process involving the formation of new subjectivities and communities within the digital environment, resulting in conflicts, exclusionary political strategies, and contested gender categories. This paper theorizes the digital field not simply as a technological environment but as a political space with various material bases that includes bodies, labor, planetary minerals, and waste. It also analyzes various dimensions of materiality, such as the formation of connections between bodies in digital space, the shaping of subjects by algorithms, the gendering of platform labor, and ecological costs. In this way, the essay seeks to present “digital feminism” as a critical epistemology that is distinct from both cyberfeminism, which approached cyberspace in the 1990s in a dematerialized way and held a utopian perspective, and from online feminism, which focused on describing events that unfolded online after the 2010s in Korea. In conclusion, this paper argues that digital feminism should consider the new ethics and conditions for organizing feminist politics within the context of the posthuman age while focusing on differences and relations as rooted in material conditions.

This essay interrogates the Eurocentrism inherent in affect theory by proposing a model of affective reading specific to postcolonial Anglophone literary texts. Drawing on Emily Apter’s notion of the “untranslatable,” this approach pays attention to culturally specific emotions and affects that are sedimented in literary form but are inadequately expressed through the vocabulary of basic emotions. While Apter employs the “untranslatable” to critique the “translatability assumption” prevalent in World Literature, this paper applies it to challenge the same assumption in affect theory. It argues for the necessity of recognizing the untranslatability of culturally specific emotions, as basic emotions are frequently accepted as pre-linguistic and universal, a stance relying on the same “translatability assumption.” This paper introduces the concept of “archipelagic feelings” to describe the nuanced layers of affect in postcolonial texts, which resonate with specific reading communities yet resist the universalizing framework of basic emotions. Like archipelagic thinking, archipelagic feeling opposes totalizing and hierarchical epistemologies of emotion.

This article challenges the persistent East–West dichotomy in comparative philosophy by examining how Nāgārjuna (ancient India), Spinoza (early modern Europe), and Latour (contemporary France) each develop relational critiques of substantialist ontology. Despite distinct vocabularies and historical settings, all three reject the idea of self-subsistent substances and affirm causality as constitutive rather than external. Nāgārjuna negates the intrinsic nature (svabhāva) of entities through the logic of emptiness (śūnyatā) and dependent origination. Spinoza reconceptualises substance and mode in a monist ontology, asserting that all finite things exist in and through others. Latour’s principle of irreduction similarly denies ontological autonomy, showing that entities emerge through networks of translation. Using Latour’s irreduction as a heuristic lens, the article identifies structural isomorphisms in these relational ontologies that transcend essentialist cultural divisions. This convergence not only enriches global philosophy but also offers resources for rethinking ecological and political crises. By undermining the substantialist and essentialist metaphysics of possession and identity, relational ontology opens possibilities for post-identitarian ethics grounded in mutual constitution and interdependence.

Theorizing of the island as a landscape within the humanities requires empirical engagement to foster a dialogue between established theoretical frameworks and the lived realities of the communities being studied. The concept of “the Selves and the Others,” long developed by Western theorists, provides a useful foundation for examining identity dynamics. However, empirical realities contribute significantly to academic debates by revealing internal contestations within “the Selves” rather than solely positioning them in opposition to “the Others.” This study explores how such contestations manifest within Ambonese identity, particularly through the lens of Hip-Hop. As a popular art form among Ambonese youth, Hip-Hop serves as a point of departure for understanding these internal negotiations. This study employs the vignette method, drawing from interviews with Ambonese Hip-Hop artists. While some artists embrace uplifting and energetic tones to counter adversity, others adopt melancholic expressions. Traditional Ambonese pop music is predominantly melancholic, centering on themes of longing and love. However, contemporary Ambonese youth have gravitated towards Hip-Hop as a genre that articulates their identity in a distinct manner. This shift signifies a conscious departure from the melancholic themes of previous generations, positioning Hip-Hop as a vehicle for self-expression, resistance, and liberation from entrenched narratives of trauma and sorrow.

As with its neocolonial center the US, the Philippine practice of film criticism was closely allied with academic and journalistic professions. The definitive triumph of Ishmael Bernal as film director occasioned several of his contemporaries to emulate his example of writing film reviews in newspapers while developing a film-industry network where they could possibly wangle directorial or scriptwriting breaks. Needless to say, the majority of these aspirants did not amount to any significance, as either critics or practitioners. What also remained unremarked was that this strategy was actually European in origin, modeled by the French nouvelle vague but with a vastly differing historical and cultural context that called for critical reconfiguring. This article will attempt an evaluation of the tradition of Philippine film criticism via its self-declared proponents, the organization of media reviewers who banded into an award-giving organization. It will make use of James F. English’s reworking of Pierre Bourdieu’s formulation and development of the concept of culture capital, in English’s The Economy of Prestige (2005), which appropriately problematized the practice of award-giving. Where we can immediately see in how, for better or worse, the critics fostered an academicization of award-giving, positioning them among premodern institutions such as the Académie Française, they were also oblivious to the larger issues raised by the intervention of US interests in Asia during the Cold War era. This accounts for a problematic legacy of short-sightedness amid Euro-style obsession with validation on the part of the Philippine critical and artistic community.

The paper engages with Edouard Glissant’s idea of “errantry” in relation to his “Poetics of Relation” through the lens of the Filipino experience of diaspora—but one that is not just a matter of dispersion, but of repatriation. The idea is deployed in undertaking a diasporic critique that focuses on repatriation, both metaphorically and materially, as it is historically embedded in literary and cultural spheres, of the Philippine experience. To this end, discussed first is “rhetorical repatriation” as it is aesthetically worked into the textual mobility of figures and play of figurations in a compilation of prayers by Marcelo H. del Pilar published during the Reform Movement under the Spanish colonial regime (1565–1898). Discussed second is “material repatriation” today as embodied today in the act of naming people and objects which are associative of their function in relation to the diasporic identity of the Filipino overseas contract workers (OCWs), as in the case of the balikbayan and the balikbayan box. The analysis focuses on the dynamic processes of linguistic and stylistic engagement and transformative refunctioning across literary-critical practices. The goal is to explore the ways by which the experience of repatriation under globalization helps define Filipino diaspora, impelled as it is by errantry’s tension in diasporic space, ripping apart yet carving identities, which are at once lived, challenged, and negotiated and renegotiated by OCWs as repatriates in that space of everyday between life and death.

This essay examines how neoliberal commodification of identity operates through a fantasy of equal exchange that fundamentally misrecognizes the structural dynamics of racial and sexual differences. Drawing on Fanon’s analysis of colonial subjectivity and Lacan’s theory of sexual difference, I argue that neoliberalism’s promise of market-mediated recognition fails precisely because it presupposes a universal exchangeability that colonial and patriarchal orders render impossible. Through an analysis of how political demands for recognition are transformed into market demands for representation, I demonstrate that neoliberal frameworks intensify rather than resolve the paradoxical position of marginalized subjects. The conversion of identity into an entrepreneurial project generates what Lacan terms jouissance—a cycle of enjoyment/suffering centered on the constitutive impossibility of achieving recognition through market participation. This theoretical intervention reveals how neoliberalism’s presumption of homogeneous exchange conceals fundamental antagonisms that commodification cannot resolve, suggesting that effective resistance must begin by exposing these constitutive contradictions rather than seeking recognition within market logic.

Howard Barker can be considered as one of the most prolific writers of the British stage who has written numerous plays as well as poetry and theoretical writings on drama. He is especially a significant name for political drama due to the strong political themes explored in his works. Brutopia: Secret Life in Old Chelsea, as its full name, is a historical play that combines political criticism together with Barker’s understanding of theatre in line with his Theatre of Catastrophe. In this play, Barker invites the audience and/or the readers to the fictionalised world of the play, decorated with the historical facts of Thomas More’s life and its timeline. Barker applies history to lay out the ground for social and political criticism of the contemporary society. He skilfully blends history with fiction in order to disturb the audience and/or the readers to make them think about the present. Consequently, this paper aims at analysing Brutopia within Barker’s creation of imaginary place as thinly disguised in history and focuses on social and political criticism that exemplifies Barker’s specific approach towards drama, Theatre of Catastrophe.

W. Somerset Maugham’s novel Cakes and Ale portrays the interwar London literary society and examines four British writers and their struggles to define their professional identities in the early twentieth century. The novel interrogates the ethics of biographical writing, questioning whether moral flaws should be revealed in a biography. By juxtaposing writers who champion unvarnished truth against those who favor protective silence, Maugham reveals the complex negotiations required for artistic survival amid the commercialization of literature. Through the lens of early twentieth-century literary marketization, this paper analyzes how institutional forces of modern literary patronage and the demands of mass readership shape a writer’s professional identity. It also examines how professional writers negotiate the tensions between intellectualism and commercialism as competing forces in constructing an ideal professional identity. Given Maugham’s success in balancing quality and popularity, his insights could provide crucial guidance for contemporary writers negotiating market demands, artistic autonomy, and ethical duty.

This paper explores the lived experiences of hijras in India, specifically focusing on individuals assigned male at birth who later identified as female. Drawing on the autobiographies The Truth About Me: A Hijra Life Story by A. Revathi, Me Hijra, Me Laxmi by Laxminarayan Tripathi, and I am Vidya: A Transgender’s Journey by Living Smile Vidya, the study examines the socio-political marginalization and systemic exclusion faced by the hijra community. Despite being recognized as the “third gender,” hijras remain subject to profound discrimination, relegated to the lowest echelons of society, and often denied basic human dignity. Through an intersectional and gender-fluid lens, this research highlights how societal perceptions rooted in rigid binary constructs perpetuate their exclusion. It underscores the need to push theoretical and societal boundaries of gender beyond traditional binaries to foster greater acceptance of diversity in gender identity. By examining the personal narratives of these authors, this paper aims to shed light on the transformative yet challenging journeys of hijras as they navigate societal rejection and struggle to assert a positive self-identity. The study ultimately calls for a reimagining of social attitudes to promote a nuanced understanding of gender fluidity. Recognizing and respecting hijras’ identities is imperative not only to mitigate the adverse impacts of marginalization but also to cultivate an inclusive society where all individuals can thrive with dignity and equality.

This paper examines the intersection of impurity metaphor and identity politics in Margaret Atwood’s short story The Man from Mars through the lens of obesity narrative. By analyzing the protagonist Christine’s embodiment of obesity and her encounter with a Vietnamese student studying in Canada, the paper explores how Atwood critiques societal stigmatization of female bodies and social exclusion of the alien by interrogating the complexities of “impurity” discourse. The narrative reveals the public rhetoric on fat women and the “Third World” men, who are labeled as “dirty other,” threatening clear-cut boundaries and categories with the parallels of fat and alien as pollutant so that they are treated as the “unwanted other,” worthy of discrimination and exclusion. This phenomenon not only points to the heterogeneity of groups within spaces and places, but also reveals the hegemonic normative assessment that confines women’s autonomy and reinforces the alien’s otherness. The findings suggest that Atwood’s obesity narrative challenges hegemonic aesthetics and purity norms while exploring the intersection of gender, ethnicity, and health discourses. The study contributes to expanding discussions on identity politics in Atwood’s work and offers an interdisciplinary perspective on logics that determine individuals’ positionings and their resistance within the monolithic “same system” and the symbolic hegemony.