episteme no. 3, a larger than usual special issue, collects a selection of responses occasioned by the overarching thematic – Marx, Asia, and the History of the Present. Marx here would not be situated simply at the level of a master signifier, but as the beginning of an open question: what possibilities are there in our moment for a reflection on Marx? On Asia or ‘Asia’ as a figure of discourse? And what of the relation of Marx and Asia, Marx in Asia, Marxism as a mode of comprehending the actuality of Asia in the contemporary moment? What broader theoretical reflections – on time, history, the ‘becoming’ of capitalism, the possibilities of politics in our era, and the fleeting object of analysis that is the present – can this relation open up? Which Marx do we need today? What politics of history, of the present, of the world? All of these contributions attempt to assist a renewed thinking of these questions across the landscape of the historical present.