Asia is to all appearances just a sloppy state of mind. As a term it lacks a constant connotation. As the possible provenance of a composite, supra-national identity it is and has been an abject failure. As an ill-advised cultural metaphor invented by uncomprehending Europeans, it betrays too many contradictions to have any consistent value. As a geographical designation it is no more than a lexical dustbin for the untidy residuum of an imprecise scheme of continental classification.
Asia is altogether too casual about itself. The regions into which it is currently divided do not aggregate into a continental totality. Those who have assembled this disembodied whole through the designation of its parts – the merchant-warriors of the colonial enterprise and merchant-academics of more recent vintage – have been singularly thoughtless in their nomenclatures.
There is a distressing lack of rigour when identifying Asia's current regional denominations. The relational coordinates are hyper-absurd. From a strictly European point of view, the Middle East makes sense only on the condition that there is a Near East. Unfortunately for the Middle East, the western end of the Near East turned out to be so near that it is busy trying to get into the European Union. As for the Far East, it is considerably nearer east than Alaska or the Siberian outposts.
When the cardinal coordinates are invoked, the outcome is a caricature. There is vast stretch of the Pontic and Caspian steppe that is called Central Asia, but this appellation lacks its justifying complement, namely North Asia. Central Asia is central in relation to nothing in particular. The lands immediately adjacent, to the east of the steppe, do not fall within Central Asia. Instead they are called Mongolia and China. The land to the west, bordering the Caspian Sea, is Europe. There is also a South Asia whose southern tip is a long way north of the southern edge of the continent taken as a whole.