Make Love in a Canoe

Recently I explained to a good friend of mine why I consider erotic love a basic human necessity, and why I dare to say that without it, life is incomplete. While one could argue with me by undoing the notion of love with a genealogy or archaeology of the concept, I say, in the widest … Continue reading →

Young at Heart

It was a simple dish. Roasted baby corn in husks, with salt and pepper on the side for dipping. I had this dish in a small seafood restaurant tucked away between two residential buildings in an alley off Yanji Street in Taipei’s East District. That evening my friends, partner, and I had far more tastier … Continue reading →

Honoris Causa

In Du bon usage de la Francophonie, Beninese scholar Guy Ossito Midiohouan tells us he habitually corrects people when they refer him as a Professor of French. Professor of literature, he insists. I understand his plight, as in my case, I was often asked, if not challenged, by people in Hong Kong why I would … Continue reading →

Voix

During this long absence, I finally got my act together. I discuss a lot of things in my dissertation, but one of those, and by far the most satisfactory one, remains my critical engagement with this Franco-Vietnamese novelist Linda Lê’s work entitled Voix. In French phonetics, la voix is indistinguishable from la voie. The two … Continue reading →

Get Really Close to Another Human Being This Life Time

Now I understand why Georges Bataille wrote about some sovereign moments between two people in love, and everybody would take it as an allegory of the bloody Spanish Civil War. Hong Kong cultural critic Leung Man-tao discusses love and marriage in a recent interview, and his main point, if you allow me for an intentional … Continue reading →

The Queen in My Heart

I have some friends who are pretty oblivious to politics. Education cannot be a factor in deciding how they want to conduct their collective, social lives because I have seen extreme some cases of people seeking doctoral degrees from renowned research universities but do not even regularly read any news–in paper, online, mainstream, alternate, local, … Continue reading →

Lettre morte

Since I have just finished a 40-page draft, and taken care of some housekeeping issues, I felt like I had earned some rights to goof around. What makes me feel incredible stupid is that every chapter of my dissertation revolves around a rather self-evident, if not at all silly, idea, that is, it appears self-evident … Continue reading →

Dog Chow

I don’t even know where or how to begin. No matter how politically pungent or extreme some commentators are in this great country, as “opinion leaders,” they still have to submit to the marketplace of opinions. They either risk being sidelined and thus recede into total oblivion, or they lose all credibility and influence in … Continue reading →

A mari usque ad mare

I have been dreaming of hiking up to Mount Roraima and traversing Canaima National Park on a boat for a little while now, but it is rather difficult to find someone to give up three weeks of their time and go with me (climbing the table top mountain itself takes an entire week). I think … Continue reading →