Raymond de Borja’s As Well, In Our Estrangement is a cosmopolitan book, unanxiously risking hermeticism in its juxtaposition of, among a host of disciplines, continental philosophy and music theory, poetics emerging from the Global North and translation studies, and in its engagement with local art and literature. The exacting self-assuredness of the book is a corollary of the author’s keenly exercised curiosities: It’s thrilling, for instance, to encounter moments when de Borja resorts to close reading, the care and precision with which he unpacks the works of other creators revealing a generous affection for his artistic subjects and an undisguised delight in acknowledging, by dissecting, skill. A whole lot of zippy, unexpected, and yet thoroughly unaccidental design informs the essays of de Borja, also a rhetorical openness, a tendency toward demonstration that doesn’t lapse into the reductiveness of summation. In As Well, In Our Estrangement, inquisitiveness does what it would, and goes where it wants to. (Mark Anthony Cayanan)