This commentary offers a critical and analytical response to Gifter Ngobeni and Janine Lewis’s article “Go-Itata Ritualised Theatre Performance Modes of Koma Aesthetics in a Performance as Research Production: Wela” (2024) published in Critical Arts. Focusing on the methodological claims embedded in the authors’ use of ukuzilanda and Go-Itata, this response examines how these concepts operate as decolonial frameworks within performance-as-research (PAR). While Ngobeni and Lewis present ukuzilanda (“fetching oneself”) as a self-recovering methodology rooted in indigenous epistemologies and articulate Go-Itata as a tri-modal system of embodied commentary, intent, and expressive narrative, this essay questions how far these constructs achieve epistemic decolonisation beyond metaphor. It situates both within broader debates on decolonial methodology, embodiment, and ritual representation, arguing that ukuzilanda and Go-Itata mark an important decolonial impulse yet require greater theoretical elaboration, ethical clarity, and reflexive grounding. The response concludes by suggesting that decolonial performance research must move from symbolic self-retrieval toward dialogic, community-based epistemic accountability.

ABSTRACT This article explores the dual-track development trajectory of Chinese science fiction (SF hereafter) in tandem with media transitions since the twenty-first century. With the popularisation of the Internet, digital platforms have emerged as new battlegrounds for SF dissemination. The symbiosis and evolution of print-based and web-native SF, exemplified by the Three-Body trilogy and The First Order, reveal a distinct yet symbiotic relationship between the two in terms of their creative ecosystems, narrative logics, and cultural influences. Research has found that the rigour and canonisation mechanisms of print media provide artistic reference points for web-native SF, while the interactivity and fragmented narratives of digital media inject narrative vitality into Chinese SF. This has led to the emergence of an “instance-like narrative” model in web-native SF. The media transitions have not only reshaped the material support for Chinese SF but also profoundly influenced its thematic expressions and aesthetic features, enabling Chinese SF to present unique humanistic reflections and technological imaginings within the global cultural context. The dual-track development trajectory is not only applicable to SF but also offers an essential perspective for understanding the transformation of contemporary literature as a whole in the face of the impact of digital technology.

ABSTRACT Violence against women is a pervasive global crisis, with an estimated one billion women affected in their lifetimes. To confront this issue, various feminist movements have employed a diverse range of protest repertoires, including demonstrations, rallies, and artistic interventions. While existing scholarship has advanced our understanding of the networks, strategies, and emotional dynamics within social movements, less attention has been paid to how artistic activism shapes experiences and interpretations of violence, particularly among marginalised women such as migrant domestic workers. To address this gap, this article explores the intersection of artistic activism, feminist advocacy against violence, and transnational mobility by investigating migrant domestic workers’ participation in One Billion Rising (OBR), a global campaign to end gendered aggression, in Hong Kong. Ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews show that through OBR, migrant women link their plight as domestic workers to the global feminist imagination and expand the framing of violence to hold accountable discriminatory migration policies; through public displays of visuals and corporeal practices, they breathe fresh life into their experiences of violence that hitherto had been confined behind the closed doors of their employers’ homes. Despite transformative possibilities, artistic activism is conditioned by participants’ intersectional identities, technological affordances, and the activism climate in the region. By focusing on artistic activism, this research contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the varied practices and meanings that animate contemporary movements against gender-based violence.

ABSTRACT This article employs the Foucauldian framework of governmentality to examine how game designs, along with the semiotic resources that underpin them, function as multifaceted apparatuses that extend and reinforce institutional, ideological, and administrative mechanisms. Through an analysis of emerging Chinese games – both digital and non-digital, including video games, board games, and hybrid formats – this study identifies three forms of governmentalization in gameplay design. First, the central government has exerted direct control over game design to strengthen ideological governance and exercise authority over creative practitioners. Second, commercially driven patriotic games have facilitated governmentalization by aligning with the “positive energy” agenda. Third, civic games have incorporated governmental epistemologies and rhetorical models into their core design. Furthermore, this article examines the processes through which local game designers create such games, illuminating how game design has become a technology of power, operating within the parameters of government-sanctioned acceptability.

ABSTRACT In post-apartheid South Africa, the female body has become a battleground where state failure, toxic masculinity, and generational violence collide. This article interrogates how cisheteropatriarchal structures and state institutions enable rape culture under the guise of silence and selective justice. Through the tragic cases of Uyinene Mrwetyana, Cwecwe, and recently, Olorato—a prominent Fees Must Fall activist murdered on a date—the analysis exposes the continuity of gender-based violence across generations, and the state’s role in scripting this brutality into social policy. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s theory of biopolitics and Paul B. Preciado’s pharmacopornographic critique, the article reveals how female bodies are politically constructed and commodified in a system that thrives on their subjugation. It calls for a radical reimagination of masculinity, justice, and institutional accountability in South Africa’s fractured democracy.