CIS consortium

What is CIS about? 

The Critical Island Studies is a consortium of universities that aim to explore theoretical, methodological,
and artistic interdisciplinary perspectives in understanding concepts and categories such as “islandic,” “archipelagic,” or “islandscapes,” and other related terms particularly in Southeast Asian and Asia-Pacific.

Based on the inaugural conference in Manila in 2019, CIS began with the hope of focusing on the theoretical and conceptual explorations of “Critical Island Studies” as a model for Southeast Asian and Asia-Pacific literary/cultural and transdisciplinbary studies.

With such a focus, CIS aims to develop a new planetary perspective from which to invent an image of the environment and create a new sense of nature with which to seek environmental justice and address other planetary concerns. The CIS 2023 conference in Yogyakarta affirmed highlighted this idea, by highlighting it through its theme.

With its island-driven focus, Godfrey Baldacchino has defined this field of inquiry as the study of “islands on their own terms” in “Islands, Island Studies, Island Studies Journal” (2006). Referred to as Nissology, its mandate is sharing, advancing and challenging existing theorization on islands and island studies where the island is “right at the centre of things, and not at the fringe.” As Baldacchino emphasizes in “Introducing a World of Islands” in A World of Islands (2007), it is about “our world of islands” rather than “the islands of the world.”

As such, the CIS intends to promote and develop critical and comparative island studies of Southeast Asia, in particular, and the Asia-Pacific, in general.

What is “Critical” about Critical Island Studies as deployed by the consortium members in various fora?

The notion of the tiny, distant, and insular island conventionally implies peripherality. Still, as Baldacchino also observes in “Island as Novelty Sites” (2010), being “on the edge, being out of sight and so out of mind, exposes the weakness of mainstream ideas, orthodoxies, and paradigms and foments alternatives to the status quo.” 

Three basic and semantically resonant or interrelated concepts are key to the constitution of these critical island studies as a scholarly and critical pursuit: the islandic (‘island-form,’ ‘insular- figure’), archipelagic (no island is ever fully isolated or remote, islands are always connected to others, some of which function for them as mainlands; “continents are nothing but large islands”), and oceanic (the extra territorial, the extra-terrestrial).

As the fields of humanistic Nesology and natural/social scientific Nissology—or more generally, and in older parlance, ‘island studies’— have amply shown over the past couple of decades, these concepts allow for thinking critically about a whole range of phenomena such as empires and neo/postcoloniality to biodiversity and linguistic/cultural heterogeneity, and from strategic parochialism to alternative cosmopolitanism. This range names only some of what has turned out to be quite a few topical possibilities and critical problematics made conceivable by these theoretical categories.

How does this paradigm shift enrich literary and cultural studies?

This new archipelagic, islandic or oceanic paradigm shift from land to sea in undertaking critical island
studies  could have a significant impact on literary and cultural studies, in particular, and transdisiciplinary humanities, in general.  One potential effect could be a renewed interest
in Maritime Literature, including both non-fiction works about the sea and fictional works set in a maritime environment.

This could lead to a greater focus on themes such as exploration, adventure, and the relationship between humanity and the natural world. In addition, a shift from land to sea could also influence the ways in which literary scholars approach and interpret particular works, e.g., certain works that were previously seen as primarily terrestrial in nature might be reinterpreted in light of a maritime perspective, potentially leading to new insights and interpretations. 

Overall, the epistemological shift from land to sea could lead to a broader and more inclusive approach to the study of literature —  one that considers the rich and varied experiences of those who have lived and worked on or near the sea, lake, bay, inlet, river or ocean.