Reading Response: Ackbar Abbas

The reading I’m mainly responding to is “Hong Kong: Culture and the politics of disappearance” written by Abbas.

In this reading, Abbas has used various ideas and a few examples to show the anxiety to disappearance in current Hong Kong’s built environment as well as culture and politics.

Hong Kong’s building environment is complex, it builds itself on a very unique historical context, containing from the traditional fishing village and small towns, colonial buildings to financial high-rises and shopping malls.

In the tutorial, our tutor mentioned one of the reasons for putting Hong Kong into a state of constant disappearance is the selective preservation of historical buildings. The selection can usually be questionable not only on the method they preserve on but also the dependence on unwanted ideology left in the colonial periods.

Moreover, capitalism/commercialism plays a dominant role in almost every decision in Hong Kong. This market-drive system will also distort preserving the most profitable/powerful one instead of true culture and history, making Hong Kong more Placeless and Anonymous eventually

P.S. One interesting point I found optimistic in the (other) reading is: Despite Hong Kong is under such a disadvantaged stage, as everything is disappearing, Hong Kong “transmute misfortunes of theories into theories of misfortune”. Just like Hong Kong can change its disadvantage of dependence (due to lack of human and natural resources) into hyper-dependence (a trading and commercial center). The research focus on the constant changing Hong Kong can also be an identity of Hong Kong. “The only eternity in this worldbut change.

 

Chen Yushan

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1 thought on “Reading Response: Ackbar Abbas

  1. Annie Lye says:

    A good reflection on Abbas’ critical commentary, especially with the concluding optimism that you bring in which demonstrates that you are actively thinking critically about these issues in our lived/constructed environment. Well done

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