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#15 Translation and Cultural Politics - Spring 2010 - 筆譯研究方法專論

張貼者： NTNU GITI BLOG on 2010年2月22日 星期一
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#15 Translation and Cultural Politics
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Death of A Discipline

4 意見:

Unknown 提到...

In this week’s reading, Death of A Discipline, Spivak discusses the possibility of a cooperative effort carried out by scholars from the fields of Comparative Literature and Area Studies, in an attempt to move us toward a ‘planetary’ view of history and society instead of the ‘globalized’ view that seems to dominate presently. In her first chapter, Crossing Borders, Spivak sets out the main foundations and orientations of what she calls a ‘new’ approach to Comparative Literature Studies. To me, the clearest example of this can be seen on page 8: “We must take the languages of the Southern Hemisphere as active cultural media rather than as objects of cultural study by the sanctioned ignorance of the metropolitan migrant.” Spivak’s main line of reasoning here is actually quite similar to that found in her article “The Politics of Translation” in which she calls for the translator to ‘surrender to the text’ and to become the ‘intimate reader’ of the text. In other words, she is looking forward to the possibility of a clearer understanding and more meaningful representation of the heteroglossia of civilization. On page 10, Spivak reinforces her hope for a fuller representation of heterogeneity with a call for us to ‘infect history and anthropology with the “other” as producer of knowledge’. Of course, these expectations are mostly in direct conflict with traditional goals of the interdisciplinary field of Area Studies which itself was created in response to fears that ‘the US was ill-equipped to respond effectively to perceived external threats’ from places such as the Soviet Union and China after World War II. In fact, Area Studies was designed as a means to understand the non-Western world not in terms of the non-Western world itself but in terms of the Western world. This is obviously the very epitome of the kind of thinking that Spivak is so ‘optimistically’ attempting to rally the troops against. I say ‘optimistically’ not because the idea is unfathomable, or undesirable, but because the struggle for such a radical change seems to be a battle that will inevitably be met with much resistance, especially from those who have the most to loose by any legitimization of the FACT of heteroglossia, namely those who have found a comfortable home in the monoglot mainstream. Spivak’s description of the present situation in academia as an instance of ‘restricted permeability’ is, I think, quite apt. This condition of restricted permeability has sadly constricted the possibilities for both learning and understanding. On page 16, Spivak refers to the ‘lack of communication within and among the immense heterogeneity of the subaltern cultures of the world” which we have talked about several times in class. This ‘problem’ of lack of communication between the world’s less-dominant agents coupled with her description on pages 17 and 18 of a ‘disappeared history of distinctions in another space’ through the translation from French to English, brings to my mind a topic that is currently being discussed among literary scholars of the Hispanic world, namely the problem of English as translatory middleman. To date, there have been several articles written to address the ever-present ‘problem’ that the vast majority of Chinese literature in Spanish translation has come to the Hispanic world through the non-neutral ‘filter’ of English. In other words, there are very few, if any, works of Chinese literature that have been directly translated into Spanish. Instead, most Chinese literature in Spanish translation has merely been translated from English translations. This would seem to be one of the many unfortunate cases in which a ‘voice’ must first be heard in English before it is to be heard on the planetary stage.

2010年6月8日 下午5:25
charlotte wu 提到...

In these two chapters, Paul de Man’s notion of ‘allegory of reading’ seems to be underpinned in Spivak’s argument. As the book title, The Death of a Discipline, suggests, Spivak is proposing a new foothold, a new perspective in Comparative Literature. That is, to combine Comparative literature with Area Studies, or in her words, comparative literature ‘supplemented’ by Area Studies. The reason I think Spivak’s argument is closely linked to Paul de Man’s lies in two aspects of Spivak’s argument: in the combination of comparative literature and area studies and in the dialectical relationship between ethnos and ethnikos. First, for de Man, in Allegory of Reading, he argues the ‘reading ’ of literary works should not be restricted in decoding the referential meaning of units. Rather, it should be read in terms of the intertwined interaction between the internal and external meaning of the text. I think, this intertwined interaction between the internal and external meaning can be seen as the basis for Spivak’s ‘new’ comparative literature (with the supplement of area studies). With the combination of comparative literature and area studies, not only form and meaning can be reconciled, but the hybridity of language can be revealed. In discussing border crossing between cultures, I think Spivak raises a very insightful point: cultural studies is usually a metropolitan phenomenon. The border crossing of the periphery and the obstacles embedded in its border crossing is scarcely disclosed.

Second, with regard to the dialectical relationship between ethno and ethnikos, it not only specifies the two sides of ‘community’—finding the collective sameness as well as the divided self against the community, it also points out that in the global age, the borders of communities are not static anymore. What is colonial or anti-colonial or what is our culture and other’s culture can hardly be situated in a clear-cut demarcation anymore. And that is why Spivak is encouraging the ‘reading ’ that dis-figures the figures into the responsible reality. In my opinion, I would say that this kind of reading is the ‘allegory of reading’ that de Man suggests.

In an overall sense, I think Spivak has embodied de Man’s reading in her own reading of the potential problems embedded in comparative literature. And she has done the job quite well. I think the issue that comparative literature was facing then is also the issue that translation studies is facing now. To me, the most insightful point she has pointed out is that segregation and globalization is in fact developing at the same time. If globalization is not developing in a certain context, then that context is segregated by the ‘globalized’ community. This essentialist viewpoint is probably Spivak want her readers to read into and dis-figure. And in translation studies, translation has also played as the ‘connector/segregator’ as the same time. Especially in terms of the translation of/into English, when something is translated into/from English, the connection with the English readership also suggests the segregation with the non-English readership. And when English has played as the lingua franca nowadays, the potential segregation of English on other languages can even be stronger. And I think translators and translation researchers should have this kind of awareness.

2010年6月8日 晚上11:07
charlotte wu 提到...

Sorry, I posted it on next week's column.
Now post it again.

2010年6月8日 晚上11:08
Craig 提到...

In Death of a Discipline, Spivak calls for a re-figuring of Comparative Literature by drawing lessons from the fields of Area Studies, Ethnic Studies and Cultural Studies. In her first chapter, she outlines a brief history of the global political forces that brought comp.lit. and Area Studies into being, and then offers insights into shifts of global demographics as a reshaping forces in the episteme of these fields. She calls on some interesting examples in her home environment of metropolitan multi- ethnic/lingual New York/Columbia University. On a Marxian foundation of “class warfare” Spivak goes on to stage her revolution of competing collectivities, one that she (re)forms along linguistic lineages to challenge traditional US/Euro comp.lit., which traditionally only recognized Spanish/English/French/Portuguese/German, i.e. languages of 19th century colonial powers. She notes the power dialectic is already in play, but is currently driven by global capitalism, which she criticizes as monolithic while emphatically claiming she does not intend to politicize comp.lit. (“we ARE politics”).

In chapters 2 and 3, Spivak chooses “mysterious texts” to show how learning to read world literatures can offer a kind of therapy of radical encounter with/between Other(ed) collectivities. She does this using Freud's notion of the uncanny, which he derived from a male patient exhibiting neurotic anxiety centered on female genitalia. Spivak's reading is brilliant for its use of gender, specifically the body, as an instrument of literary criticism, as she builds her theory of encounter as a feeling of familiarity/strangeness with vaginal imagery in “Heart of Darkness.” Furthermore, her use of language, true to deconstruction, is anxiously perched on multiple potentialities; her terminology never seems to mean something concrete that can be held in the mind with one thought. Spivak's commitment to language and literature is exemplified by her ability to generate concepts that are often too large for mere words to hold, and her anti-reductionist strategies that rarely “demystify.”

Spivak's end goal in chapter three is to suggest an alternative to globalization in the form of planetarity. With this concept she leaps from constructs such as race, nationality, gender, culture to collectivities, an idea that I wish to believe (just so I can understand) might me something like Judith Butler's identity politics, or Benedict Anderson's “imagined communities,” that is, contingently performed and forever reconfigurable. In planetarity, Spivak locates the planet, along with our imagined relationship to outer space, in the position of alterity, while reminding us of our transcendental figurations of Earth such as woman/mother/vagina/God/nature/home.

Overall, what we are offered in this book is Spivak herself: her subaltern identity, a celebrated professor at Columbia (and more), and her theoretical concerns of Deconstruction, Marxism and Feminism. As a graduate student, I felt I learned much about how to locate an issue larger theoretical narratives.

2010年6月9日 凌晨1:22

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