Essays, Studies, & Research
“...Milton explores the polarising effects of knowledge acquisition before and after the Fall, warning against the dangers of consumption driven by hubris and greed.
As Michael shows Adam the fate of his descendants—of the backbreaking toil, perpetual pestilence, and seemingly inexorable presence of immorality—the questions Adam poses hold uncanny, contemporary resonance.
How do we make a life out of suffering? Why should we face injustice with altruism? Is there a purpose beneath all this chaos? Perhaps it has to do with tending to one’s own inner Paradise, after all: given the freedom to wander, and choosing to return home anyways.
Only having fallen, and still found our way back, does the homecoming become all the more sweet.”
Excerpt from “Between Eden and Error: The Ambivalence of Knowledge in Paradise Lost”
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“...The collective unconscious also becomes a channel with which reality is filtered and conceptualised through, obfuscating personal judgement with pre-conditioned conventions… [thus,] people unconsciously become modern mouthpieces for antiquated ideologies.
Whether in the vulnerable state of sleep, the repression of psychological phantoms, or the inherited layers of generational wounds, Hardy explores states of unconsciousness as a versatile, fatalistic medium, ultimately used to compromise the agency behind character motivations. Beneath its throes of tragedy and amorphous definition of the unconscious, Tess calls into question the legacy of taboo texts, “trauma porn,” and what some may call the “voyeuristic sadism” gleaned from a narrative like Hardy’s.
Yet to pierce beyond a social fabric requires first to examine what it deems taboo—and so, amidst the tight-laced conventions of Victorian England, a literary wound or rift in the consciousness may well be exactly what it needed. Herein lies the incentive behind externalising the literary unconsciousness, and beyond character motivations—probing into those lying dormant in our own consciences we have yet to exhume.”
Excerpt from “Earthly Secrets, Phantom Wounds: The Inheritance of Taboo & Trauma in Tess of the D’Urbervilles”
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“Lùo yè gūi gēn, “a fallen leaf returns to its roots,” is the Chinese idiom for retiring to one’s hometown in old age, or an expatriate’s desire for burial in their home country.
For my people—the Hakka of Southern China—the concept of home itself has a complicated history. Our name translates to “guest,” derived from ancestors fleeing war from the Northern capital down to the rural villages in the South. The villages of Fujian Province first became known for strong mortuary superstitions, accumulated from generations of vagrants and their ephemeral hometowns, and second, for its emigrants (a vast majority of overseas Chinese hail from Fujian) (LaCroix 56).
Following centuries of movement and political upheavals, where is home for migrant Chinese today? As the third-largest diaspora in the world, these scattered leaves branch far and wide (Kably). Chinese funerary traditions are inherently reflective of individuals’ social identity and ties to their surrounding community.
Hence, how have Chinese mortuary beliefs been influenced by, or transformed as a result of, diasporic migration?”
Excerpt from “Flights From Death: The Diasporic Legacies of Chinese Mortuary Rites”
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