Time: Oct 8 (Wed), 2025, 2:30 pm
Venue: YC Liang Hall (LHC) G06
Those who register will be sent a link to the Zoom session before the event.
Registration: https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/mycuform/view.php?id=3618369
Speakers:
Prof. Melani Budianta (Universitas Indonesia)
Seventy years after the Bandung conference, which offered solidarity amongst Asia-Africa nations fighting against Western colonialization, the world today is under the grip of global capitalism. What are the possibilities and limits of Asian Humanities in reclaiming a critical space to offer a more humane world through transborder solidarity? The presentation will discuss an experiment of Global South commoning in Documenta-15, Kassel, Germany (2022) which introduces the concept of lumbung as collective governance, work and sharing. Another case is the Critical Island Studies initiative, which foreground islandic and archipelagic perspective against continental thrust. The paper argues that such collaboration amongst Asian humanities could potentially carve “third spaces” within the neoliberal hegemony. Given existing challenges, however, the spread and sustainability of such spaces need the critical intervention of the humanities into the dominant local and global framework. It requires a continuous cross generation and transdisciplinary work and multi-layered strategies.
Short bio:
Melani Budianta is an intellectual/activist working on cultural commoning in rural/urban kampungs. Previously Professor of Literature and Cultural Studies at the Universitas Indonesia, she is now member of the Cultural Commission, Indonesian Academy of Sciences.
Prof. Phrae Chittiphalangsri (Chulalongkorn University)
Decolonizing the Façades: re-investigating cultural exteriority, translational modernity and colonial self-identification from a Thai perspective
This paper explores the notion of exteriority as a foundational condition of discursive representation—defined not by an inner essence or unified authorial intent, but by what Foucault (1984) calls “external conditions of existence.” In Orientalism (1978), Edward Said articulates a paradox in which the West seeks to ‘inwardly grasping’ the Orient through acts of “translation” that simultaneously maintain its external positionality. This tension between internal subjectification and external discursivization marks a critical locus of colonial power, where hierarchies are constructed and contested.
Focusing on Siam—modern-day Thailand—a nation that escaped formal colonization, this study examines how colonial influence shaped its negotiations of identity through what I call translational modernity. Rather than direct subjugation, Siam engaged with colonial power through the strategic construction of cultural exteriority: performing civility and modernity as a façade to deflect Western accusations of barbarism and thus avoid colonization. Drawing on key moments in modern Thai literature, this paper argues that Thailand’s decolonial imperative is rooted not in the recovery of a lost interiority, but in the dismantling of the colonial façades it once constructed. In this sense, decolonization becomes an act of decolonizing the façades.
Short Bio:
Phrae Chittiphalangsri is Associate Professor of Translation Studies at CCTI, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. She is IATIS’ Co- Vice President and serves on New Voices in Translation Studies’ editorial board. Her most recent work is Of Peninsulas and Archipelagos: the Landscape of Translation in Southeast Asia (2024), co-edited with Vicente Rafael.
Prof. Guo Ting (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
Beyond De-Westernization: A Double Decolonial Approach
This paper critically appraises the imposing legacy and persisting tendency to primarily focus on de-westernization in prevalent decolonial discourses. Instead, I call into attention an often-neglected issue, namely internal, non-Western forms of colonialism and coloniality and its tacit collaboration with Western and global forces in Asia’s historical, social, and political complexities. Such internal colonialism and coloniality can appropriate movements such as anti-Asian hate, postcolonial rhetoric, and ethnonationalistic sentiments, utilizing languages of victimhood in the US/Western-dominated international order while conveniently masking their own violence and hegemony. This paper calls for the importance of a double-decolonial epistemology to revisit the intellectual and political history that created such neglect of non-western colonialism and coloniality and highlight events, peoples, and voices that are often neglected in the West but also suppressed in Asia, transforming western-centric critiques in decolonial discussions.
Short Bio:
Ting Guo (she/her) specialises in religion, politics, and gender in transnational Asia. She is the author of Religion, Secularism, and Love as a Political Discourse in Modern China (2025) and co-editor of special issue Religion and Social Movements in Hong Kong in the Journal of Asian Studies.
Moderator:
Prof. Elmo GONZAGA (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
The talk will be conducted in English.
Organized by the MA in Intercultural Studies Programme, CUHK
Enquiry: issacli@cuhk.edu.hk / helenachung@cuhk.edu.hk
Time: Oct 8 (Wed), 2025, 2:30 pm
Venue: YC Liang Hall (LHC) G06
Speakers:
Prof. Melani Budianta (Universitas Indonesia)
Seventy years after the Bandung conference, which offered solidarity amongst Asia-Africa nations fighting against Western colonialization, the world today is under the grip of global capitalism. What are the possibilities and limits of Asian Humanities in reclaiming a critical space to offer a more humane world through transborder solidarity? The presentation will discuss an experiment of Global South commoning in Documenta-15, Kassel, Germany (2022) which introduces the concept of lumbung as collective governance, work and sharing. Another case is the Critical Island Studies initiative, which foreground islandic and archipelagic perspective against continental thrust. The paper argues that such collaboration amongst Asian humanities could potentially carve “third spaces” within the neoliberal hegemony. Given existing challenges, however, the spread and sustainability of such spaces need the critical intervention of the humanities into the dominant local and global framework. It requires a continuous cross generation and transdisciplinary work and multi-layered strategies.
Short bio:
Melani Budianta is an intellectual/activist working on cultural commoning in rural/urban kampungs. Previously Professor of Literature and Cultural Studies at the Universitas Indonesia, she is now member of the Cultural Commission, Indonesian Academy of Sciences.
Prof. Phrae Chittiphalangsri (Chulalongkorn University)
Decolonizing the Façades: re-investigating cultural exteriority, translational modernity and colonial self-identification from a Thai perspective
This paper explores the notion of exteriority as a foundational condition of discursive representation—defined not by an inner essence or unified authorial intent, but by what Foucault (1984) calls “external conditions of existence.” In Orientalism (1978), Edward Said articulates a paradox in which the West seeks to ‘inwardly grasping’ the Orient through acts of “translation” that simultaneously maintain its external positionality. This tension between internal subjectification and external discursivization marks a critical locus of colonial power, where hierarchies are constructed and contested.
Focusing on Siam—modern-day Thailand—a nation that escaped formal colonization, this study examines how colonial influence shaped its negotiations of identity through what I call translational modernity. Rather than direct subjugation, Siam engaged with colonial power through the strategic construction of cultural exteriority: performing civility and modernity as a façade to deflect Western accusations of barbarism and thus avoid colonization. Drawing on key moments in modern Thai literature, this paper argues that Thailand’s decolonial imperative is rooted not in the recovery of a lost interiority, but in the dismantling of the colonial façades it once constructed. In this sense, decolonization becomes an act of decolonizing the façades.
Short Bio:
Phrae Chittiphalangsri is Associate Professor of Translation Studies at CCTI, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. She is IATIS’ Co- Vice President and serves on New Voices in Translation Studies’ editorial board. Her most recent work is Of Peninsulas and Archipelagos: the Landscape of Translation in Southeast Asia (2024), co-edited with Vicente Rafael.
Prof. Guo Ting (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
Beyond De-Westernization: A Double Decolonial Approach
This paper critically appraises the imposing legacy and persisting tendency to primarily focus on de-westernization in prevalent decolonial discourses. Instead, I call into attention an often-neglected issue, namely internal, non-Western forms of colonialism and coloniality and its tacit collaboration with Western and global forces in Asia’s historical, social, and political complexities. Such internal colonialism and coloniality can appropriate movements such as anti-Asian hate, postcolonial rhetoric, and ethnonationalistic sentiments, utilizing languages of victimhood in the US/Western-dominated international order while conveniently masking their own violence and hegemony. This paper calls for the importance of a double-decolonial epistemology to revisit the intellectual and political history that created such neglect of non-western colonialism and coloniality and highlight events, peoples, and voices that are often neglected in the West but also suppressed in Asia, transforming western-centric critiques in decolonial discussions.
Short Bio:
Ting Guo (she/her) specialises in religion, politics, and gender in transnational Asia. She is the author of Religion, Secularism, and Love as a Political Discourse in Modern China (2025) and co-editor of special issue Religion and Social Movements in Hong Kong in the Journal of Asian Studies.
Moderator:
Prof. Elmo GONZAGA (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
The talk will be conducted in English.
Organized by the MA in Intercultural Studies Programme, CUHK
Enquiry: issacli@cuhk.edu.hk / helenachung@cuhk.edu.hk