Interlingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and the Translated Modernity

Author: (American) Liu Hua
Translator: Song Weijie et al.
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-06-01
Features: Can different languages be incomparable? If so, how can we establish and maintain hypothetical equivalent relationships between different words and their meanings? Based on the recognized equivalent relationships, what does it mean to translate one culture into another's language? This book examines different aspects of modernity generated in translation from the perspective of interlinguistic practice, by reconstructing the spaces where various historical relationships in linguistic practice are presented, with the aim of rethinking the possibilities of cross-cultural interpretation and linguistic mediation between the East and the West.
Excerpt: Female Body and Nationalist Discourse: Field of Life and Death by Xiao Hong, a female writer from Northeast China, lived in an era of national crisis and suffered its consequences. She wrote several long novels, as well as a wealth of short stories and essays, responding to the crisis of national life and death until her premature death in 1942. As a novelist, she was luckier than some other female writers, such as Ling Shuhua, Eileen Chang, and Lu Yin, who remained somewhat marginal in Chinese literature until recently. This phenomenon is partly due to the enduring influence of Lu Xun, who once mentored Xiao Hong and highly praised her works in the 1930s. Additionally, it is also because, in the eyes of most male critics, Xiao Hong did not limit herself to the "trivial details" of female life but instead addressed broader themes such as national survival and anti-imperialist struggles. Although this somewhat beneficial interpretation has secured Xiao Hong's classic status in modern Chinese literature, however low this status may be compared to other giants, its price is that it erases the profound tensions in Xiao Hong's reflections on women and the nation-state. My discussion of Xiao Hong is not to elevate the classic status of this writer, but rather to critique the nation-state orientation and male-dominated literary criticism practices, which should be held responsible for the appropriation of Xiao Hong's works for nationalist purposes. I admit that I dislike the discourse that treats classicization as an innate right or "entitlemen." The discourse of rights and "entitlemen" makes critical thinking possible while also rendering it powerless. It is precisely here that my feminist research orientation, drawing from certain corrective feminist critiques, primarily focuses on the absence or marginalization of women in established literary classics. Of course, the importance of corrective critique still awaits further recognition, but the binary rhetoric of center and periphery itself cannot produce vibrant critical thinking. We can only face the fact that some have been historically marginalized, while others deliberately choose marginal positions to better launch attacks on the center. For example, while including previously marginalized writers in the literary canon may make the canon different or even improved, this practice may either inevitably challenge the very idea of classic normalization or, by granting a freer and more diverse representation, actually reinforce this classic norm. When Spivak says, "What we are trying to do is not just expand the canon with anti-classical norms, but to abolish the method of classic normalization," she may be overly optimistic, but I believe the critical insight implied in her statement is worth deeply remembering. Xiao Hong's life and writings, in their struggle against nationalist discourse, are multifacetedly related to the gendered status of modern Chinese criticism and its nationalist ideology. Since Field of Life and Death was published as part of Lu Xun's "Slave Society Series" (the other two being Ye Zi's Harvest and Xiao Jun's August in the Village), its reception and evaluation have always been dominated by nationalist discourse, which attempts to suppress Xiao Hong's ambiguous attitude toward nationalism and her subversion of the male strategy of appropriating the female body. Most critics regard it as a "national allegory," a patriotic anti-imperialist work. As a result, today, one cannot truly interpret Xiao Hong's creations without being aware of that highly developed, institutionalized, and male-centered critical tradition, because this tradition limits and determines the understanding of the novel's meaning. However, the gender politics in literary criticism practice has so far failed to attract the attention of critics and literary historians caught up in it.