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The twentieth century is witness to a revival of interest in the bildungsroman as writers, especially from postcolonies in the Global South, turn to it to reflect on concerns of history, culture, and social life in a postcolonial setting. Scholars, however, disagree regarding the nature of these reworkings. Some see them as a continuation of the original European models established by Goethe, Dickens, and other European writers. Others find such associations Eurocentric and call for more local standards of evaluation. This article examines this debate by looking closely at a version of the postcolonial bildungsroman proposed by the Kannada writer U. R. Ananthamurthy in his 1965 novel Samskara. The novel follows an orthodox Brahmin priest from Karnataka who, disillusioned by the corruption and moral decay in his community, embarks on a pilgrimage to rediscover his identity in the rapidly modernizing world of twentieth‐century India. Ananthamurthy's bildungsroman, while retaining some structural similarities, departs from European models in fundamental ways. The motif of the hero's journey, for instance, is flipped. The novel tracks the hero's growing discontentment with his community leading to a sense of communal alienation, thus inverting the European journey‐trajectory that typically follows the hero's movement toward social integration. It also deviates from the generic Western rags‐to‐riches storyline that complements that hero's road to social integration. Instead, it adopts the narrative structure of the Niti‐shastra, a set of precolonial Hindu texts that teach about the wise conduct of life. Such readings not only facilitate fresh ways of understanding the relationship between the Western and the postcolonial models, but they also allow new insights into understanding how South Asian authors utilize the bildungsroman to rediscover precolonial and classical works through modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that, by looking to the generalization of a certain kind of artistic or creative character in paradigms of work, there is a view onto a different kind of relationship between culture and militant action and fugitivity. Here, the term destituent art is proposed to sketch out a form of cultural production that does or might lay waste not only to institutional targets of critique but also to the structurally immanent belief in institutional reform that underlies the aesthetics of that critique. It is an invitation to reconsider some key myths that structure art discourse (even if they appear as objects of critique) and an appeal to read that discursivity as not just productive but potentially destituent. To do so, the author reads operaismo's rereading of Marx against Marxism alongside theorizations of destituent insurrection through the subject of the artist. Some recent social movements in New York City targeting art institutions are analyzed to consider this connection. Like Colectivo Situaciones' discussion of destituent insurrection as a grammar that unifies surplus populations through their expressions of refusal (the riot, the strike, the commune) that are simultaneously modes of reorganizing forms of life, a destituent art would not signal a turn to a productive pessimism—that all creative work is already subsumed—but that the cultivation of destituent power actualizes and is actualized by the aesthetic production of places of action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The general body of literature on the theology of liberation tends to focus either on ecclesiastical debate, theological intricacies, or discussion within the church. Not much attention is paid to the empirical investigation of how civil society members might be influencing the rhetoric of the local church. This article takes a different approach and explores how liberation movements in Ukraine and Hong Kong inform and inspire elements of the theology of social justice within local Catholic communities through bringing to life their social dreams and engaging the churches in action. Looking at how churches and activists interact in the aftermath of the Euromaidan and the Umbrella Movement, we explore how grassroots activists approach religious hierarchies and how, in these circumstances, the clergy of the churches might be pressured into maneuvering between the social dreams of civil society and the Vatican. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay outlines how religious ideas and practices shaped the activism of Chin Wan, known as the "godfather of localism" in Hong Kong. While Chin's role in the rise of the localist wave of the 2010s is well known, his role as a religious figure has been completely ignored. As the earliest exponent of "valiant warrior" (yung mou 勇武) and "be water" militant tactics based on Confucian and Daoist narratives, he had a deep influence on Hong Kong protest culture during and after the Umbrella movement of 2014. This case undermines conventional secularist narratives of Hong Kong social movements and offers new insights into the politics of identity in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores how and why protestors from the 2019 anti-ELAB (Extradition Law Amendment Bill) movement turned to popular Chinese religious practice for political dissent, and simultaneously tracks the negotiation of emerging sociocultural identities of Hong Kongers in the face of political upheaval. Attempting to pressure the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government into meeting their demands, protestors adopted a wide range of tactics that brought protest activities to previously unaffected residential districts. Although no less hectic than other months during the movement, August 2019 also produced indelible moments of nonviolent innovation that attracted international media coverage. One of the protest events from this fertile period, the Hong Kong–wide Night Assemblies for Freeing Spirits, Almsgiving, Prayers for Merit, and Removal of Evil 全港超幽佈施祈褔除惡晚會, was held on August 9, 2019, in the districts of Wong Tai Sin and Shatin and specifically centered religious practice as a creative and potent source of political expression. To better understand this intersection of religion, politics, and identity in Hong Kong, this article analyzes protestors' ritual utterances and interview responses from the protest event's proceedings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This forum explicates Hong Kong's complex religious and ritual landscape and the ways in which it influences social movements and identity making, in response to large forces of religion and protest around the world today, including in Ukraine and places in Asia such as Iran and Myanmar. Scholars have noted how various forms of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and popular Chinese religions have been diffused into the secular spaces of Hong Kong's governing state structures, formal and informal economies, and ad hoc protest organizations in civil society. Recent work has also emphasized the ways that race, ethnicity, and gender have been shaped not only by institutions with religious ties but also by theological and cosmological narratives that circulate through the public sphere. Religiosity in the Hong Kong protests might also be conceived as polyphonic, layering over familial practices with structures that have colonial baggage and postcolonial aspirations. Religion, in such senses, tends to be unbound by secular attempts to fence it into private spheres; it might be seen as forging a new civil society and civil identity through recent protests and shaping new theoretical frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the concept of being "on-site" in the context of South Korean democracy movements. It discusses how being present in public spaces and witnessing marginalized places became a quality used to evaluate political strategies and literary works. The article includes examples of on-site struggles in the era of infrastructural capitalism, such as aesthetic movements, experimental music, and cinematic techniques. It also emphasizes the importance of paying attention to absences and silences in historical narratives and explores the destabilization of national identities through global cultural exchanges. The text further discusses topics related to cultural movements, capitalism, and ecological issues, including the rise of infrastructural capitalism in China, challenges faced by communities after disasters, and the importance of place making in rebuilding. It also analyzes a film that addresses ecological visibility and offers alternative perspectives on life and death. Overall, the text highlights the significance of on-sitedness and local experiences in understanding and addressing these complex issues. [Extracted from the article]

The article offers information on the overlooked contributions of Iranian students in the United States to US-based social movements against imperialism. Topics include the predominance of US racial formations in shaping ethnic studies, the impact of the geopolitical relationship between Iran and the United States on the perception of Iranian students, and the complex political consciousness and internationalism of Iranian students as explored in Manijeh Moradian's book, This Flame Within.

The article reconsiders contemporary internationalist experiences in relation to the multiple temporalities that characterized key cycles of struggles in the 2010s. Although these cycles are heterogeneous in social and political composition, they have resulted in significant synchronizations. The article's specificity lies in linking a reinterpretation of internationalism to an examination of the role that multitemporalities play both in longue durée capital development and in the various phases that characterized the post-2008 world. The series of crises that have marked the past decade have in fact led to contradictory outcomes, on the one hand opening the door to the rise of post-fascist forces, while on the other hand triggering unusual and powerful struggles. These outcomes have contradictory political orientations but are united by the fact they all have temporalities that are discordant with those initially imposed by capitalist processes. With regard to social movements, the article shows how the diversity of the geographies, practices, and claims animating them can be understood as unfolding "within and against" the post-2008 global scenario. It illustrates how contemporary social movements exhibit complex and contradictory rhythms and temporalities, arguing that the tuning between these multitemporalities is vital for rethinking the renewal of internationalism today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay takes "Interstices: A Small Drama of Words" as an opening for thinking about the impact of Hortense Spillers's thought on Black feminist, queer, and transgender studies. In a reflection on the interstitial, the essay engages Spillers's approaches to the discursive, historiographic, and iconographic dimensions of racialized gender and sexuality in a reading of the failed philological proposal of thon and the life and public memory of the military figure Private William Cathay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For over sixty years Kipp Dawson has built coalitions on the front lines of the civil rights movement, Vietnam antiwar movement, women's movement, gay liberation movement, labor movement, and education justice movement, confronting state-sponsored violence and challenging systems of active harm and death. Her astonishing career—and marginalized identities as a lesbian, Jewish, working-class woman from a multiracial family—demonstrates the radical power of ordinary people engaged in collective, transformative action. In this visual essay, the authors share material from two new archival collections spanning the remarkable breadth and depth of Dawson's intersectional feminist activism. They suggest rethinking movement leadership as women's radical collaboration and demonstrate its role in organizing both resistance to state violence and alternative visions for the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay considers the 2022–23 feminist uprising in Iran through a transnational feminist lens, as part of a global revolt against patriarchal, homophobic, and transphobic state violence. After first placing the Women, Life, Freedom movement in the context of modern Iranian history, the essay analyzes the dramatic changes in revolutionary politics and consciousness that have resulted in the shift of gender and sexual liberation from the periphery to the center of the freedom struggle in Iran. These novel developments have also opened up new possibilities for diasporic and transnational feminist solidarities that can cut against Iran's relative isolation from other social movements in the global South. The essay focuses on Iranian iterations of the Chilean feminist song "A Rapist in Your Path" as examples of how affective desires for revolution are transmitted across borders and embodied at the same time, rendering these performances situated acts of resistance as well as sites of South-South solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the complexities of local Hong Kong religion after the imposition of the National Security Law in 2020. The author highlights the challenges faced in preserving the local flavor and recognizing the agency of those who resisted oppressive regimes. The article explores the intersections between religion, social movements, and identity in Hong Kong, including Sinophone religiosity, the role of the Catholic Diocese, and the engagement of Islamic and Sikh communities. It also examines the implications of religious institutions in the uprising of urban life and their involvement in the colonization of Hong Kong. The article concludes by emphasizing the geopolitical complexities and the ongoing negotiation between religious institutions and civil society in Hong Kong. [Extracted from the article]

This document is an editorial foreword from the Journal of Asian Studies. The first article discusses the postwar reconsideration of Japan's place in the world and the reconceptualization of history by intellectuals associated with the Kyoto School. The second article explores the inconsistencies in property rights in colonial-era Korea and the conflicts that arose from changes in cultural practice. The third article analyzes the incorporation of Taylorism in modern China as a theory of administration and a technique of governmentality. The fourth article examines how states use student labor camps to produce productive modern citizens, focusing on India's program in the first two decades after independence. The issue concludes with a forum on religion and social movements in Hong Kong, highlighting the relationship between religious beliefs and political activism in the context of the city's political struggles. [Extracted from the article]

Yoonkyung Lee's book, "Between the Streets and the Assembly: Social Movements, Political Parties, and Democracy in South Korea," explores the gap between strong social movements and weak political parties in South Korean politics. Lee argues that the capacity for collective action among political actors in different organizations has shaped the outcomes of social movements and political parties. The book examines the post-1987 political developments in South Korea, particularly the roles played by former student activists and revolutionaries. It also challenges the assumption that weak party politics indicates underdeveloped democracy and provides a balanced perspective on the challenges and achievements of the 586 generation. The book suggests that multiple pathways exist for democratic politics and that South Korea's case should not be evaluated from a Western-centric view. However, the analysis could be extended to include the role of conservative conversions in undermining progressive political reforms. The book emphasizes the importance of expanding the capacity for collective action and building solidarity infrastructures to strengthen democracy. Overall, "Between the Streets and the Assembly" provides valuable insights into the legacies of the democracy movement, the interactions between political parties and social movement organizations, and postauthoritarian developments in South Korea. [Extracted from the article]