How scholar Ackbar Abbas changed the way people thought about Hong Kong

Ackbar Abbas, a Hong Kong-born scholar whose influence extended beyond academia to shape artists, filmmakers, writers and many others, died on July 13 at the age of 84 after a brief battle with cancer. Over decades of teaching at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the University of California, Irvine (UCI), Abbas did not simply analyse Hong Kong – he altered the way Hong Kong could be described. His 1997 book Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance was particularly…