In this article, I explore the relationship between the reproduction of hegemonic discourses of national representation in the reception of literature in translation and processes of canonization. I argue that World Literature as a paradigm hinders our efforts of overcoming the burdens of canonization. As a case study, I analyze the implications of building and reproducing a canon of Japanese literature in translation in the United States for the way Japan has been represented in public discourse in the last thirty years. I will focus on the reception of Murakami Haruki as the contemporary representative of the canon of Japanese literature in translation. My goal is to examine how the circumstances of Japanese literature in translation perpetuate mechanisms of canonization in their engagement and legitimation of an ongoing logic of representation that is non-confrontational with agents in power. I aim to test the extent to which studying the reception of East Asian literature in translation can help us promote a broader discussion on the appropriateness of such frameworks in our understanding of the contemporary literary phenomenon.
The global translation field is characterized by an asymmetrical and hierarchical structure. The translation of Mo Yan’s fiction into English falls into the underrepresented research domain of translation flows from the periphery to the center. Combining Bourdieu’s theory and world literature studies, this article explores how Mo Yan’s fiction circulates from the periphery to the English center and becomes world literature. Drawing on a socio-archival analysis of materials collected from the Chinese Literature Translation Archive, the article reveals the multifaceted and invisible roles of Howard Goldblatt, Sandra Dijkstra, editors, and publishers in conjunction with their interactions in the production and consecration of Mo Yan’s fiction. In so doing, it argues that the circulation of Mo Yan’s fiction into the American literary field and its ascendency to the ranks of world literature can be primarily attributed to the manifold roles simultaneously performed by the network of translation agents with their cultural, social, economic and symbolic capital. The article also stimulates a rethinking of the applicability of Bourdieu’s sociological theory established in the French context to other contexts and contributes to a deeper understanding of the mechanisms for producing and consecrating peripheral literature in the dominating literary field.
Gao Xingjian’s 2000 Nobel Prize win is a commonly cited example of the global literary market’s “technologies of recognition,” where the West acts as an “agent of recognition,” which recognizes the other according to its own standards, while the non-West is an “object of recognition,” that desires to be recognized. Rather than presuming the passivity of Gao’s reproduction of Western cultural dominance, I am more interested in exploring how he actively reconstructs Chinese culture with Orientalist elements. For example, Of Mountains and Seas (1989) and Snow in August (1997) are two plays which Gao completed in France and which appropriates ancient Chinese cultures. With reference to Gao’s “cold” theatrical techniques of suppositionality and tripartite acting I argue that these two plays address feminist and religious limitations in ancient Chinese cultures by strategically appropriating Orientalist stereotypes in their portrayals of the Chinese mythology of Chang E escaping to the moon and Zen Buddhism respectively. Overall, this paper contributes a more nuanced understanding of Gao’s negotiations with Orientalism: Gao’s “escape” from Orientalism is less about the avoidance of Orientalism than a theatrical staging of Orientalism.
To what extent do anglophone Malaysian literatures retain their capacity for representation, when they are written, marketed, and sold outside Malaysian borders? How do we ascertain their authenticity as Malaysian text? This paper demonstrates how the conceptualization of the “Global Malaysian Novel” is a shift that responds to and problematizes traditional postmodern and postcolonial modes of reading that have not yet transcended the nation as a frame of reference. While a critique of their complicity in global literary markets centered in the UK and US is often reduced to an ad hominem attack, there remains much to be said about the effects of their increasingly transnational material production upon their more formally understood aesthetic and literary qualities. As such, I explore the discursive effects of the “Global Malaysian Novel” through the debates on national literature and literary tradition. In doing so, I chart how literary scholars have approached contemporary Asian literatures and attempted to situate them critically within realms of the national, within postcolonial Southeast Asia, and within World Literature frameworks. In particular, I bring the critical work of Malaysian scholars like Lloyd Fernando and Wong Phui Nam into productive dialogue with the broader field.