Project MUSE®: positions: asia critique - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/162
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in positions: asia critique.daily12026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 7, no. 2 (1999);
Vol. 8 (2000) through current issueLatest Articles: positions: asia critiqueTWOProject MUSE®positions: asia critique1527-82711067-9847Latest articles in positions: asia critique. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Editor’s Introduction: Parables of Dissent
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984019
<p></p>
Each of the contributions in this issue of positions engages with stories, whether as film, science fiction, visual arts, or social movements, to find a way out of our troubles through parables of dissent. The introduction’s title takes its cue from the opening article by Jennifer Coates, “Hamaguchi Ryūsuke’s Evil Does Not Exist as Degrowth Parable,” in which she reads the 2023 film as an environmental parable for degrowth as advocated by Saitō Kōhei, author of the bestseller Capital in the Anthropocene (2020). Rather than any simple lessons, however, she points to the linguistic roots of parabolē to recuperate the sense of the parable as subversive speech—sometimes indirect, often unexpected. In doing so, she pays
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984024">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/162/image/coversmallEditor’s Introduction: Parables of Dissent2026-02-24text/htmlen-USEditor’s Introduction: Parables of Dissent2026-02-242026TWOProject MUSE®114352026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-24Hamaguchi Ryūsuke’s Evil Does Not Exist as Degrowth Parable
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984020
<p></p>
Hamaguchi Ryūsuke’s Evil Does Not Exist (Aku wa sonzai shinai 悪は存在しない, 2023) is perhaps the most enigmatic film of the director’s career to date. Reviewers, journalists, and interviewers wrestle with the film’s confounding ending, which leaves audiences asking, “What did I just see?” (Jacobson 2024: 18). Nonetheless, the film has made an impact both at home and overseas, winning prizes at film festivals from London to Kerala. It is clear that Evil Does Not Exist is saying something important, but what? Hamaguchi’s signature refusal of easy political readings of his work necessitates new approaches to understanding this elusive film. This article proposes reading Evil Does Not Exist as a parable, which can provoke
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984024">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/162/image/coversmallHamaguchi Ryūsuke’s Evil Does Not Exist as Degrowth Parable2026-02-24text/htmlen-USHamaguchi Ryūsuke’s Evil Does Not Exist as Degrowth Parable2026-02-242026TWOProject MUSE®991342026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-24Listening to the Stories Songaksan Tells
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984021
<p></p>
Mount Songak (Song-ak- san 송악산; hereafter, Songaksan), in the south-western part of Jeju Island, is a volcano that has double craters and a parasitic cone. The administrative unit where Songaksan is located is Daejeong-eup 대정읍, and this area is also called Moseulpo 모슬포, meaning “port with sand.” In this article, those three terms—Songaksan, Daejeong-eup, and Moseulpo—are used interchangeably, all referring to the same location (fig. 1). As part of Jeju Olle Trail Route 10 and one of the best photo spots of the island, Songaksan boasts dazzling ocean views.1 Behind the image of a tourist destination, however, lie many intersecting histories of violence and pain. By confiscating local farmers’ land and forcibly
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984024">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/162/image/coversmallListening to the Stories Songaksan Tells2026-02-24text/htmlen-USListening to the Stories Songaksan Tells2026-02-242026TWOProject MUSE®1013172026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-24“Archaepelago”: Island Intimacies (Naeryŏk) and Weathered Flesh in Jeju Art
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984022
<p></p>
What happens when art conjures resentful spirits of genocide and becomes witness to the excavated? In 2007, an excavation of human remains was carried out at the Jeju international airport construction site on Jeju Island (T’amra), South Korea. These remains were part of a mass burial of unidentified victims of 4.3, or the April 3 uprising and massacre (1948–54): a US and South Korean state-sanctioned genocide of Jeju islanders carried out over nearly seven years under an anti-communist charge that justified the violent and indiscriminate killings of Jeju islanders at the hands of mainland troops (tobŏldae).1 Kang Yo-bae (2020: 150–51), a Jeju-based artist, recalls: “Hundreds of remains, buried under 5m of thick
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984024">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/162/image/coversmall“Archaepelago”: Island Intimacies (Naeryŏk) and Weathered Flesh in Jeju Art2026-02-24text/htmlen-US“Archaepelago”: Island Intimacies (Naeryŏk) and Weathered Flesh in Jeju Art2026-02-242026TWOProject MUSE®1171772026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-24Aging into Posthumans
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984023
<p></p>
The responsibility of shaping a young China in the future lies with its young generation.The once-young China is getting old. When Liang Qichao (1900) famously declared that China’s future depended on its youth at the dawn of the twentieth century, little could he have foreseen that, a century later, it would be the older demographic overshadowing the nation’s trajectory. In 2005, science fiction (SF) writer Liu Cixin (b. 1963) offered a dystopian glimpse of this future in his novella “Supporting the Gods” (Shanyang shangdi 赡养上 帝) where an aging population threatens to overwhelm planet Earth. On an ordinary evening, five billion humans find themselves surrounded by two billion elders — an alien species known as the
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984024">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/162/image/coversmallAging into Posthumans2026-02-24text/htmlen-USAging into Posthumans2026-02-242026TWOProject MUSE®1036472026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-24The Artificial World Model of “Chinese SF” Criticism: A Reflection on the State of the Field by Means of Hao Jingfang’s Fiction
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984024
<p></p>
On July 2, 2020, the BBC, CNN, Business Insider, and a handful of minor news outlets reported that a thirteen-ton shipment of beauty products suspected of being made of human hair had been seized the day before by the US Customs and Border Protection agency at the Port of New York in Newark (see BBC News 2020; Gordon 2020; Perper 2020). According to the CBP officers, the shipment originated in Xinjiang, China, and its contents were a product of the imprisonment and forced labor regime implemented by the Beijing party-state in that region. Despite its egregiousness, the news story was quickly overlooked and archived as yet another unsettling detail in the unfolding history of human rights abuse by the Beijing
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984024">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/162/image/coversmallThe Artificial World Model of “Chinese SF” Criticism: A Reflection on the State of the Field by Means of Hao Jingfang’s Fiction2026-02-24text/htmlen-USThe Artificial World Model of “Chinese SF” Criticism: A Reflection on the State of the Field by Means of Hao Jingfang’s Fiction2026-02-242026TWOProject MUSE®1166702026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-24