Positioning modernist texts in the English department in Hong Kong: From ‘planetary’ modernisms to ‘planetary’ pedagogies?

Abstract

This essay discusses the pedagogical implications of recent theorizations of new modernisms as ‘planetary’ for Asian contexts such as Hong Kong. It explains how modernist texts lend themselves strongly to the uncanny experience of seeing the self in the other and vice versa in the setting of Hong Kong modernities, which leads to a much deeper understanding of both the self and the other. The essay argues that this quality can be harnessed using a creative writing approach that emphasizes exploring these present modernities in courses on modernism in English departments. One of the conscious goals of modernist studies in Asian settings such as Hong Kong then becomes not only (or even not primarily) the turn outward, but also the turn inward, the defamiliarization and refamiliarization of the ‘home’.