THE 14th LITERARY STUDIES CONFERENCE

In Southeast Asia, literature has never been neutral. Writers, poets, playwrights, and cultural producers have had to confront the harsh realities of colonialism, neocolonialism, authoritarianism, and neoliberal globalization. Literary texts and performances have served as weapons of resistance, instruments of state ideology, and laboratories for imagining alternative futures. In a world ruled by Thucydides’ aphorism that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must,” literature is challenged to provide an alternative space—one where imagination contests domination, and where voices from the margins articulate visions of justice and solidarity.

Today, the stakes are heightened. The rise of populist and autocratic leaders across the globe, including in Southeast Asia, has intensified the deployment of manipulative discourse, manufactured consent, and the continuing erosion of democratic institutions. Literature, criticism, and theory must respond to these challenges, not only by documenting them but by actively intervening in the struggle over meaning, representation, and power. Critical theory should empower critics and writers to expose the mechanisms of authoritarian populism, to resist the co-optation of language, and to reclaim literature as a site of ethical and political imagination.