學者艾卡·巴亞斯逝世　以「déjà disparu」概念重塑香港敘述

Abbas, whose concepts such as ‘déjà disparu’ are still used to explain how Hong Kong feels from the inside, died on July 13 at the age of 84 Ackbar Abbas (right) and his third wife, Liu Sola (left), at their home in Beijing. Abbas, a scholar who profoundly influenced Hong Kong arts and academia with his work, has died aged 84. Photo: Chang Yung-ho Ackbar Abbas, a Hong Kong-born scholar whose influence extended beyond academia to shape artists, filmmakers, writers and many others, died on July 13 at the age of 84 after a brief battle with cancer. Over decades of teaching at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the University of California, Irvine (UCI), Abbas did not simply analyse Hong Kong – he altered the way Hong Kong could be described. His 1997 book Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance was particularly influential. It gave the world a lexicon for a city that often feels as though it is arriving, vanishing and reinventing itself all at once. Nearly three decades after the book’s publication, institutions, exhibitions and writers in Hong Kong still return to his phrases when they want to explain what the city feels like from the inside. Abbas coined the terms “déjà disparu” – a peculiar form of anticipatory nostalgia – and “reverse hallucination”, meaning the failure to see what is right in front of you because the visual field is overrun by speed, cliché and saturation. Both are rooted in the rapid change and existential dramas of 1990s Hong Kong, but they captured the imagination of scholars and thinkers well beyond Abbas’ hometown. Ackbar Abbas (left) takes part in a talk at the University of Hong Kong with singer Leslie Cheung (centre) and actor Brigitte Lin (right) in March 1999. More recently, he championed intellectual frameworks that promote more flexible ways of understanding culture instead of rigid, all-encompassing theories. These, such as the “poor theory” approach, have proven influential and are evidence of a life of constant interrogation and reflection. Abbas’ parents had familial roots in China, India and Malaysia. While they were born and raised in Hong Kong, they never fully integrated into local Cantonese culture. It gave Abbas an early sense of being both “inside and outside” the city, as he described it. “I don’t look Indian or Malaysian at all,” he said in a 2018 interview with urban culture magazine Zolima CityMag. “You know, I have this name and I have this face, and the name doesn’t go together with the face. So I feel like I am a living example of an allegory. And I identify with nowhere.” From student to scholar That biographical in-betweenness was uncannily close to the perspective that later defined his work. After earning a master of arts degree from HKU in 1968, he taught there until 2006. He helped establish HKU’s department of comparative literature in 1989, where he served as department chair, and co-founded the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Cultures in 1999. He moved to UCI in January 2007, where he remained professor of comparative literature and later developed work in critical theory. Abbas’ central breakthrough was to argue that Hong Kong’s culture became legible not in calm self-possession but under pressure. In his account, the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration and the approach of the 1997 handover triggered an urgent search for identity. Abbas (left) and his colleague Jeremy Tambling at the University of Hong Kong in 1996. Photo: David Clarke/Hong Kong in Transition archive The paradox, as later reviews of his work summarised it, was that Hong Kong culture seemed to “appear” precisely because its disappearance was suddenly imaginable. This is what he called a “culture of disappearance”. His later work widened the lens. “Hyphenation” was his shorthand for Hong Kong as a culture without sovereignty, dependent on another power to survive. “Poor theory” was his way of rejecting grand, self-satisfied systems in favour of a more improvised method responsive to messy realities. Unhandled type: inline-plus-widget {"type":"inline-plus-widget"} All of this had an impact well beyond the ivory tower. Abbas gave Hong Kong a language for anxiety, style, impermanence and self-invention. He explained why the city could feel hyper-visible and elusive at once, intensely local yet always connected to elsewhere. His writing helped people understand why Hong Kong cinema, architecture, photography, literature and, later, contemporary art, so often seems haunted by speed, loss, displacement and reinvention. “Arguably no writer exerted greater influence in the field of Asian cinema studies than Abbas,” wrote film scholar Gary Bettinson in 2015. In contemporary art, Pearl Lam Galleries’ 2013 group show “Déjà Disparu” explicitly referenced Abbas’ ideas, bringing together works by Ho Siu-kee, Ellen Pau, Sara Wong and Vincent Yu that explored urban change, amnesia and locality in Hong Kong. Critics and curators have pointed to Abbas’ influence in the work of artists as diverse as Adrian Wong and May Fung, and filmmaker Jenny Suen cited him as an influence on her 2017 film The White Girl . The cover of Abbas’ Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (1997). Photo: ‎University of Minnesota Press A dedicated mentor to the last Abbas’ life reflected his curiosity. Earlier this week, his son, Nadim Abbas, a contemporary artist, told the South China Morning Post: “Sitting in dad’s Beijing study now, [I’m] reminded that he was at any given period a serial collector of books, pipes, watches – especially fake ones – knives, and most recently, fountain pens, literally gushing out of the shelves.” For years, Abbas had split his time between California, Hong Kong and Beijing, where he had a home with his third wife, the writer, composer and vocalist Liu Sola. He died in the Chinese capital. Nadim Abbas said that, even in his final days, his father insisted on returning home from the hospital to conduct Zoom meetings with his graduate students at UCI. “[He was a] dedicated mentor to the last minute.” Abbas is survived by his wife, as well as his twin daughters, Ayesha Abbas Macpherson and Alisha Abbas Macpherson, from his first marriage to Ophelia Cheung-Macpherson (the sister of beloved pop star Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing ); his sons, Jamil and Nadim, from his second marriage to Linda Tong; and his three grandchildren, Ocean Abbas, Glyn Jenkins and Cerys Jenkins. Abbas (left), literary theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (centre) and Benjamin Lee (right), with whom Abbas co-founded HKU’s Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Cultures, at a 2002 department of comparative literature symposium at HKU. Hong Kong tributes to Ackbar Abbas Chloe Lai, co-founder of Nose in the Books, a humanities bookshop in Hong Kong: “Nose in the Books is a private library with a strong focus on the humanities. We owe our intellectual lineage to the department of comparative literature at HKU, of which Ackbar Abbas was one of the founding figures. “Abbas’ contribution to Hong Kong studies was transformative. His seminal work, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance , is essential reading for anyone working in the fields of cultural studies, literature and Hong Kong culture. It remains a classic for international scholars seeking to understand Hong Kong. “Hong Kong culture has long been rich and dynamic. Unfortunately, many have failed to recognise its richness and vitality, preferring to describe Hong Kong as a ‘ cultural desert ’. Abbas challenged this misconception by coining the term ‘reverse hallucination’. Reverse hallucination refers to the failure to see what is already there – to overlook the cultural richness that exists in plain sight.” Alberto Gerosa, founder of Thy Lab, a cultural space that recently held an event called ‘Bring Your Own Book’ in honour of Abbas: “For students and creators of my generation in Hong Kong, Ackbar Abbas’ work has been a quiet compass to consult over the years, especia