Lydia He Liu: translation perspectives, Chinese women, and feminisms

David Frank at BBB has written a post that is getting a lot of attention.  He's asking, "What is Your Translation Metaphor?"  And he's referenced, and he credits me elsewhere for referencing, "a Chinese perspective [by which] translation involves 'host' and 'guest' languages. Another metaphor."

I'd like to give credit where credit is due.  Lydia H. Liu is the one who's articulated this perspective.  She's a scholar, Chinese, a woman, feminist.  Here are some of the things she's said:

As I [Lydia H. Liu] have argued elsewhere, one does not translate between equivalents; rather, one creates tropes of equivalence in the middle zone of translation between the host and guest languages. This middle zone of hypothetical equivalence, which is occupied by neologistic imagination, becomes the very ground for change. (Tokens of Exchange: The Problem of Translation in Global Circulations: Post-Contemporary Interventions, 137)

I am interested in theoretical problems that lead up to an investigation of the condition of translation and of discursive practices that ensue from initial interlingual contacts between languages. Broadly defined, the study of translingual practice examines the process by which new words, meanings, discourses, and modes of representation arise, circulate, and acquire legitimacy within the host language due to, or in spite of, the latter’s contact/collision with the guest language. Meanings, therefore, are not so much “transformed” when concepts pass from the guest language to the host language as invented within the local environment of the latter. In that sense, translation is no longer a neutral even untouched by the contending interests of political and ideological struggles. Instead, it becomes the very site of such struggles where the guest language is forced to encounter the host language, where the irreducible differences between them are fought out, authorities invoked or challenged, ambiguities dissolved or created, and so forth, until new words and meaning emerge in the host language itself. I hope the notion of translingual practice will eventually lead to a theoretical vocabulary that helps account for the process of adaptation, translation, introduction, and domestication of words, categories, discourses, and modes of representation from one language to another and, furthermore, helps explain the modes of transmission, manipulation, deployment, and domination within the power structure of the host language. (Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity-China, 1900-1937, 26)

If it is always true that the translator or some other agent in the host language always initiates the linguistic transaction by inviting, selecting, combining, and reinventing words and texts from the guest language and, moreover, if the needs of the translator and his/her audience together determine and negotiate the meaning (i.e., usefulness) of the text taken from the guest language, then the terms traditional theorists of translation use to designate the languages involved in translation, such as “source” and “target/receptor,” are not only inappropriate but misleading. The idea of source language often relies on concepts of authenticity, origin, influence, and so on, and has the disadvantage of re-introducing the age-old problematic of translatability/un translatability in the discussion. On the other hand, the notion of target language implies a teleological goal, a distance to be crossed in order to reach the plentitude of meaning; it thus misrepresents the ways in which the trope of equivalence is conceived in the host language, relegating its agency to secondary importance. Instead of continuing to subscribe to such metaphysical concerns perpetuated by the naming of a source and a target, I adopt the notions “host language” and “guest language” . . . (. . . radically alter[ing] the relationship between the original and translation) , which should allow me to place more emphasis on the host language than it has heretofore received. (Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity-China, 1900-1937, 27)

The unmarking of the male gender as a gendered position… has the function of masking the true condition of gender politics in the universalizing discourse of modern literary criticism. This is the condition that concerns me most as I continue to ponder the meaning of national literature from a gendered point of view....  Her observation [Ms. Rey Chow’s observation] is timely and important, because it shows us that feminist gender criticism is not just about real women and sexuality – critics whose work is not theoretically informed by feminist gender criticism invariably express an interest in the so-called images of women or women writers – but rather, as Joan W. Scott, whom Chow quotes here, would put it, it is a way of reading and intervention into the dominant theoretical and critical practices.
(Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity-China, 1900-1937, 195)

Is there a female tradition in modern Chinese literature? By asking this question, I intend to bring to critical attention a number of interesting claims put forth by women.... 
("Invention and Intervention: The Female Tradition in Modern Chinese Literature," in Gender Politics in Modern China: Writing and Feminism, 36, edited by Tani E. Barlow)

Jewish Religious Feminisms

Rachel Barenblat at her blog The Velveteen Rabbi gives a preview of the "spring 2009 print issue of Zeek magazine [which] is on the theme of Sex, Gender, and God."

Hugo Schwyzer at his blog shares "'Kindly Remembrance': of faith, ancestors, and debts to the past; a long post in response to Daisy B." - which starts with Daisy . . . a young Jewish lesbian feminist [who blogs] in defense of communitarian values [asking things like:]

What are the effects of practicing my traditions?
What are my obligations to my ancestors?
What are my obligations to my descendants?

χ-mas posts

Like so many of you, I get tense around Christmas. I feel it in my body.

For my ten-year-old niece, this is going to be an unforgettable holiday season because her parents just signed divorce papers, and this weekend already she had to put a publicly-inebriated parent to bed, with the help of that parent's "lover" who precipitated the split up.  And the little girl has already delivered Merry Christmas presents to us from that parent, perhaps in anticipation of the fact that we'll not all be together this year.  My niece has told my daughters that if she ever has to run away, she wants to come live with us.  Incarnation gets a new meaning.

So I hope you'll understand some of my pathetic reflections on 3 blogposts I read this morning. I was still shivering from the cold winds when I saw them.

1

The lightest post, in all the most positive refreshing ways, is Charlotte's Holiday Lights.  She gives us various delights in and her gripes about Merry Christmas lights and all. As I find myself agreeing with her about inappropriate symbols (like "wrong time" reminders of the "traumatic crucifixion" and of the post-shroud "resurrection"), I wander into remembrances of our recent shrouded Texas history of burning crosses.  And I sense in my cinched-up neck muscles this bemusement from somewhere about the future of our planet and how awfully un-green the present blast of lights is.  To fight my cynicism, I smile to myself, at myself: "The Grinch is Green."

2

The most challenging post is James K.A. Smith's.  He's copied for us John D. Caputo's essay, "Why the Church Deserves Deconstruction: A Preface to the Chinese Translation."  This is Caputo's own preface to the Chinese edition of his book What Would Jesus Deconstruct?  The challenge isn't in the translation at all because Caputo writes the essay in English mostly.  I really really want more of us to get the bit of French he leaves us with:  Viens, oui, oui.

But we ought to at least get Caputo's play on WWJD as a rhetorical trope, which he explains. Another thing he says is . . . and hear this in Caputo's own words:

That I am writing these pages on the eve of the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama, an African-American with a suspicious sounding name, as the forty-fourth president of the United States is the result of a number of convergent forces. It is due to the collapse of right wing economic greed in the United States–the effects of which are felt most severely on the poor, the least able to endure it, of course–about which the Christian Right has been scandalously silent. It is a tribute to the disillusionment with the older and reactionary leaders of the Christian Right by young Christians who desire to return to the authentic spirit of peace and justice of the gospels. But it is also a tribute to progressive political figures like Mr. Obama who gave their political vision a religious heart, who spoke in terms of faith and hope. . . . I am saying that progressive leaders should recognize the prophetic import of biblical religion. The very idea of a democracy, the risk and the hope that is embedded in this idea, is that the chords of peace and justice will be struck by giving a hearing to a polyphony of voices, of men and women, black and white, of whatever lineage, western or non-western, including both religious and secular voices. The faith of a responsible Christian in the postmodern world is that wherever there is peace and justice, there the sweet, strange and compelling words of the Sermon on the Mount are resounding.

I still hear my wife (while listening to our pastor preaching the "unto the least of these" bit from the sermon on the mount in church yesterday) whispering to my son (just back from college): "Isn't that the bit that Barack Obama quotes so much?"  I guess I'll let us ponder how Smith's post is not a "wrong time" message.

3

The third post is the most shocking, for me anyway.  It has this eye-catching title, "Christmas: The Time for Feminism."

Just when I'm settling for Caputo's "hermeneutics of deconstruction" and thinking of how Rich Rhodes accuses me, from time to time, of going postmodern on readers at BBB, I read this post, by Polycarp (a new blogger friend). Turns out, as I'm thinking at Christmas of never blogging again, Polycarp has been reading my blog for a year.  He's now confessing he's not a feminist and yet, and yet I say, he kindly asks his readers to read translation, Matthew's and mine and Miriam's.  He suggests:  "It might do us well to put ourselves in the shoes of Mary, and perhaps the other women as we read this account." 

And I smile (to myself again, at myself):  Josef didn't get to shop for Miriam at DSW Shoes, and neither one had a Zappos account.  Our neighbors, who are Jews, had our whole family over for dinner last night; it was a good time of reflecting on the holidays too, as we ate and laughed and felt tensions together.  They gave me a copy of Benyamin Cohen's My Jesus Year, and I've already gobbled down the first two chapters (laughing all the way).

  l' écriture feminine, the translation of the body, the tensions of Christmastime 

What Feminisms Recover: in Others' Words

In Aristotle’s time, . . . the facts of women’s nature were certainly not sufficiently comprehended . . . . [But to] any true appreciation of a woman’s qualities . . . Aristotle, by the whole trend of his prejudices, was opposed. His mistake was that he failed to realise the moral aspects of feminism. A nation that degrades its women will inevitably suffer degradation itself. Aristotle lent the weight of his name to a profound error, and helped to perpetuate the malady which had already been the chief cause of the destruction of Greece.

--F. A. Wright, Feminism in Greek Literature

There has been a dramatic increase in the size and scope of Israel's feminist organizations over the past 18 years, with 69 different groups, including nine rape crisis centers and 14 battered women's shelters, currently operational. . . . Although the report will be published in full only next January [2009], [Dorit] Abramovitz presented partial data on Thursday at the country's 16th National Conference on Feminism, which runs through Saturday in Nazareth. . . . Beyond the issue of Israeli-Arab coexistence, she said, there had been numerous joint campaigns in such areas as sexual discrimination, the sexual abuse of women by public office-holders, and the economic independence of women and their place in the workforce. Abramovitz said the report would be published in Hebrew, Arabic, English and German.
--Ruth Eglash, "Major rise in number of Israeli feminist organizations"

In these three sutras, Candrottara, Jewel Brocade, and Queen Srimala not only provide positive role models for women seeking enlightenment, but also address the issue of sexual transformation. The Buddha was male, and much has been made of the necessity of being male in order to attain enlightenment. The Mahayana tradition holds that one of the thirty-two major marks of a Buddha is maleness, thus women cannot hope to become Buddhas unless they transform their female bodies into male. However, in The Sutra of the Dialogue of the Girl Candrottara, Candrottara speaks on the meaninglessness of sexual transformation. . . . Jewel Brocade, . . . in The Sutra of Sagara, the Naga King, responds to the claim that one cannot attain Buddhahood within a woman's body. . . . Alex and Hideko Wayman, translators of the complete scripture The Lion's Roar of Queen Srimala would place Srimala in one of the last three Bodhisattva stages. Although not a Buddha, at such a high level of realization Queen Srimala remains an important example of the potentialities of women on the path to enlightenment.
--Kerry L. Fitz-Gerald, "Buddhism Needs Feminism"

In India after 1947, laws were made to men’s advantage; it was men (mainly upper-caste Hindu men) who put the Constitution together. When policies and plans were formulated, they made no mention of women. For Indian nationalists, some citizens were more equal than others. But then, I tell myself, Indians are not unique in this: there’s hardly a place in the world where national liberation movements have meant liberation for women. . . . Today, the problem hasn’t gone away. Rather, it has become more complicated. India’s new nationalism, vocally pro-pounded by the Hindu right wing, sees women as mothers and wives, supporters of men as they struggle for a Hindu rashtra or nation. Feminism is an ugly word. Good Hindu women stay at home and help to shore up patriarchy.
--Urvashi Butalia, "Mother India"

In the Muslim world the women need to be empowered in all respects. I am not calling for a feminist movement in the Western sense. I am calling instead for the Khadijaization of the Muslim women who should be economically independent, educationally well-equipped, politically alert and socially active. This class of Muslim women is the need of the time. The welfare of the Muslim community cannot be uplifted unless its female half is uplifted. The phenomenal success of the microcredit scheme and the Grameen bank experiment in Bangladesh is a clear illustration of what women empowerment can do to the development of Muslim societies. A woman is just another insan created by Allah who has endowed equally with all the faculties that Allah has granted to men. An insan is creative in essence and it is the duty of the society to remove any obstacle that prevents the blossoming of this creative faculty of insans. Islamic orthodoxy has been a killer of female creativity. Muslim women are breaking out of their shackles. Their struggle for emancipation from the bondage of tribal traditions and irrational customs has started. Hundreds of Muslim women intellectuals and activists in every part of the world are leading the struggle. It is a new and revolutionary wave that is lashing the intellectual and social beaches of Islam. In this country also Muslim women have established their own research and action forum. This gives me a sense of optimism and hope and it is a sign that another of Azeez's visions is becoming a reality.
--Assalamu alaikum, "The Muslim predicament: some reflections on local and international challenges"

Carolyn Custis James wants women to be theologians—passionate, unabashed, and learned theologians, regardless of their official title. Her book When Life and Beliefs Collide encourages bake-sale supervisors to do this as much as academics. James is so audacious, that she wants every single Christian woman in the world to appropriate theology as a way of life, a discipline, a relationship, and a spirituality. And she wants men to recognize this desire as being in conformity with the will of God. . . . The [Christian] Scriptures, unsurprisingly, have been a battleground regarding women's involvement in theology, and it is precisely on this territory that James endeavors to win women back. She is disgusted, and rightly so, with the false dichotomy between Marys and Marthas. The former, it is assumed, live in their heads and neglect proper service projects, while the latter more comfortably settle into a hospitality role without a care in the world for useless theological abstractions.
--Sarah E. Hinlicky, "The CT Review: Reuniting Mary and Martha; Theology is women's work, too"

Aristotle believed you could not teach philosophy to women and slaves. A sexist society would love it if women continued to see themselves as either saints or slaves, victims guilty of nothing or demons guilty of everything, for none of these roles demand inclusion in the human contract of responsibility and justice.
--Naomi Wolf, Fire with Fire: The New Female Power and how it Will Change the 21st Century