Professor Ackbar Abbas (b. 1942 in Hong Kong) died peacefully in Beijing on July 13, 2026, after a brief period of illness. He is survived by his wife, Sola Liu, his four children and three grandchildren. Ackbar joined the Department of Comparative Literature at UCI in January 2007, after teaching at the University of Hong Kong. His singular and creative work has had a major impact globally, both in the academy and as a public intellectual, and brought new ways of thinking and a new style of writing to UCI. His international recognition is reflected in his invited keynotes and public lectures, including in South Africa (WISER), Taipei, Singapore, Seoul, London, Russia, South Korea, Germany, Canada and Hong Kong. He also served on the editorial board of major journals in Hong Kong, Turkey, the UK, Australia, and the Netherlands.
Relying on the generative force of paradox, indeterminacy, negative capability or epistemological “black holes” to unhinge familiar ways of seeing, Ackbar’s method was reminiscent of Walter Benjamin’s whose figure of the collector he viewed as emblematic of the fate of modern experience. A champion of “Poor Theory,” a concept Ackbar developed in the context of the collaborative work at UCI’s Critical Theory Institute, he followed T.W. Adorno’s dictum that the task of philosophy is to find discursive ways of describing the unsettling experiences offered by literature and the arts. Juxtaposing familiar theories with new objects, Ackbar’s work generated surprising actualizations that made both theory and object appear in a new light.
Almost thirty years ago, Ackbar Abbas published his pathbreaking book Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance in which he analyzed cinema, architecture and writing as a rebus that projects the city’s desires and fears. A foundational work in postcolonial theory, the impact of this book expanded into urban studies, architecture, literary and cultural studies, film and media studies as well as political theory. According to one review it was also “the most influential reading of Hong Kong’s culture.” In recent years, Ackbar had increasingly focused on quantum theory, with special attention to the Arts, most prominently Anthony Gormley on whom he wrote two essays, reviewing his work from the perspective of ‘complementarity’ in quantum theory. Another major theme in Ackbar’s recent work was “volatility,” which he considered a new episteme which spanned from finance to quantum theory. Returning to his interest in cities, Ackbar analyzed how Asian cities, under the impact of new forms of capital, politics, media, and technology, recede from cognitive grasp and create “phantasmagorias of the interior.”
In the department, Ackbar Abbas will be remembered as a creative and wonderfully engaging colleague who gave generous feedback on others’ work and who inspired many debates in the School of Humanities. Those of us fortunate enough to have counted him as a friend have experienced his rare gift of friendship. He also stood out as an inspiring, charismatic teacher and mentor of students who was most generous with his time, compiling hand-written exercise books on all his graduate student mentees. He challenged students with both new and unfamiliar course materials that increased diversity in research and with a method of teaching that encouraged them to think in new ways. One of his students received a message from him at her graduation, telling her with a quote from Fernando Pessoa to “be plural like the universe.” Perhaps this is a message that Ackbar would have left behind for all of us. We will miss you, Ackbar.
Written by Gabriele Schwab, on behalf of the Department of Comparative Literature