25/09/2026
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Prof. Dr. Jove Jim S. Aguas of the Philosophy Department and the Research Center for Theology, Religious Studies, and Ethics, and the Editor-in-Chief of Philosophia: International Journal of Philosophy, was the keynote speaker at the 2026 Yonsei University-Shanghai Jiao Tong University Graduate Academic Forum. It was held on September 17-18, 2026, at the Minhang Campus of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China. It was organized by the School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and the Department of English Language and Literature, Yonsei University. The forum centered on "Subjectivity, Technology and Cultural Representation." It explores how technological change and sociocultural transitions reshape subjective experience, identity formation, and cultural difference, and how these transformations are represented, negotiated, and critiqued through literary narratives, media forms, and cultural practices. The forum seeks to build a cross-cultural, interdisciplinary platform for young scholars.
Prof. Dr. Aguas, as the main speaker, presented a paper entitled "Recovering Personhood: Subjectivity, Technology, and Cultural Representation in East Asian Modern Cultural Texts: A Personalist Inquiry." His paper focused on East Asian societies, which exhibit a distinct late-modern paradox: rapid industrialization, ubiquitous connectivity, and advanced artificial intelligence that have propelled these regions to technological leadership. However, this progress extends beyond external environments to fundamentally reshape selfhood, moral agency, and cultural representation. Across literature, cinema, and digital media, these societies continually examine personal identity within a regime in which algorithms, virtual realities, and mechanized systems mediate embodied human existence. Prof. Dr. Aguas noted that analyzing these modern transformations requires frameworks addressing both socio-technological realities and foundational questions of identity. Although poststructuralist and posthumanist approaches help clarify shifting norms, fluid gender roles, and hybrid identities, they often fail to adequately account for moral agency, personal dignity, and the intrinsic need for authentic human connection. Thus, he applied a personalist framework, a synthesis of Thomistic metaphysics and Wojtyลan personalism, to select East Asian literary and cultural texts and investigated how these works represent the human subject under the immense pressure of pervasive technology, digitization, and hyper-modernity. He contended that beneath tropes such as cyberpunk, virtual realities, artificial existentialism, and reincarnation, East Asian narrative media strive to reclaim the concrete human subject. Incorporating personalist critiques of technological degradation and relationality, his analysis demonstrates how these texts depict the ongoing tension between technological mediation and individual agency. Ultimately, East Asian cultural productions do more than merely reflect societal anxieties over technological saturation; they serve as critical platforms for asserting sui juris or self-mastery, reaffirming inviolable personhood and dignity, and fostering meaningful intercultural dialogue in an increasingly digital world.
During the forum, Prof. Dr. Aguas engaged in a discussion with the young scholars and provided insights into improving their papers for publication in reputable journals.
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