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The Poetics of Fei Ming: How the Classical Merged with the Modernist

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[wp-svg-icons icon=”user” wrap=”i”] Candy Fan Wang [wp-svg-icons icon=”envelop” wrap=”i”]

Foreign Languages College, Shanghai Normal University, China

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 1, January-March, 2022, Pages 1–11. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n1.02

Abstract received:  29 March 2021 | Complete article received: 8 June 2021 | Revised article received: 22 Sept 2021 | Accepted: 2 Dec 2021 | First Published: 05 February 2022Published: February 5, 202

(This article is published under the Themed Issue Contemporary East and Southeast Asian Literary and Cultural Studies)
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The Poetics of Fei Ming: How the Classical Merged with the Modernist

Abstract

Fei Ming (1901-1969) is an iconic fictionist who had mastered the fusion of Chinese classical literary images with Western modernist writing techniques, a glaring label overshadowing his accomplishments in poetry. This paper looks at Fei Ming’s footprint in poetry within the context of the reforming and modernizing process of Chinese poetry in the first half of the 20th century. It offers a particular angle of viewing Fei Ming’s undervalued poetic aesthetics, in which he seamlessly reconciled the confrontational forces vacillating the development of Chinese poetry, namely, traditional form versus modern form and Chinese style versus Western style. Specifically, he blended modern philosophy with traditional lyricism to create natural flows of beauty and imbedded the Western symbolist and imagist techniques in forming a unique Chinese poetry style without compromising the sense of coherence. His proposal that new poetry should embrace a poetic “mind” with a prose-like “body” has shaped the making of Chinese modern poetry in its time of need. His equal treatment of the poetic elements of Chinese tradition and Western modern manifests a new interpretation of modernist poetry, a different mentality to approach modernism, and further a distinct paradigm of global modernisms, alternative to the Anglo-American ones.

Keywords: Fei Ming, modern Chinese poetry, poetic theory, global modernisms.

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Rethinking, Narrating, Consuming Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asia

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[wp-svg-icons icon=”user” wrap=”i”] Jeremy De Chavez [wp-svg-icons icon=”envelop” wrap=”i”]

Department of English, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China.

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 1, January-March, 2022, Pages 1–3. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n1.01

Published: February 5, 202

(This editorial is published under the Themed Issue Contemporary East and Southeast Asian Literary and Cultural Studies)
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Rethinking, Narrating, Consuming Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asia

As this special issue would not have been possible without the generosity of certain individuals during these most trying times, this modest introduction must necessarily begin with gratitude. My co-editor, Yue Zhang, and I would like to express our sincerest thanks to the tireless and gracious people behind Rupkatha. It is because of their vision and efforts that Rupkatha has become a truly global journal of interdisciplinary Humanities, a home to many ideas that challenge and extend the borders of what it means to do Humanistic research in order to all the more properly respect its integrity. We hope that this special issue that features works from and about the East and Southeast Asian regions, along with their associated diasporic communities, will contribute to the noble vision of Rupkatha. We extend our gratitude to the numerous scholars who shared their expertise as peer-reviewers and whose generosity ensured the success of this special issue. We are also very grateful to our editorial assistants Mr. John, Fong Chi Chon and Mr. Chris, Miao Chi both of whom often went above and beyond the call of duty to ensure the smooth production of this special issue. Of course, we must also thank all those scholars, both established and up-and-coming, who responded to our call for submissions. The response to this special issue could only be described as overwhelmingly robust, which is indicative of the unquestionable vigor in the field of contemporary East and Southeast Asian literary and cultural studies. Indeed, the sheer diversity of the submissions makes it a challenge to collectively introduce the essays without the risk of taking away from their inevitable multiplicity by imposing an artificial thematic unity. Thus, while the concerns of the essays included in this issue cannot be fully contained within their assigned thematic categories, and by no means should be read exclusively within such, I shall nevertheless risk grouping them based on what I conceive to be their principal critical concern—that is to say, rethinking, narrating, consuming.

A substantial number of essays in this special issue have attempted to rethink concepts that have been ossified through convention by bringing them into contact with cultural texts from and about Southeast Asia, revitalizing both concept and cultural text in the process. Carlos Piocos’s “Women Trespassing Borders: Imaginaries of Cosmopolitanism from Below in Mia Alvar’s In the Country” interrogates dominant conceptions of cosmopolitanism by exploring “versions of cosmopolitanism from below” and in the process “examines the intersections and contradictions of class, gender and race in cosmopolitan imaginaries of mobilities in Southeast Asia.” Locating his theoretical intervention within the new materialist and decolonial turns, Christian Jil R. Benitez’s “Bagay: Articulating a new materialism from the Philippine tropics” examines Bagay poetry to “articulate a Philippine rendition of new materialism, through the notion of bagay” and its characteristic tropicality.  Extending his previous work on Chinese Filipino culture, Joseph Ching Velasco’s “From Private Eye to Public “I”:  The Chinese Filipinos in Charlson Ong’s Hard-Boiled Fiction” examines how a generic literary form is strategically disfigured when relocated in the postcolony so that it may speak to post-colonial and diasporic concerns. Hazel T. Biana’s “Traversing Paths/Pasts: Places of Filipino Philosophy” focuses on the concept of place in the work of selected Filipino philosophers to argue that place reveals “the trajectories of their type of philosophizing“ and thus played a significant role in the development of Filipino philosophy. Anton Sutandio’s “Skinned Performance: Female Body Horror in Joko Anwar’s Impetigore” examines the ambivalent status of the female body in cinema to argue that “the portrayal of non-traditional female characters suggests an attempt to challenge the mainstream patriarchal narrative in contemporary Indonesian horror cinema, and at the same time hints at the perpetuating subjectification of woman’s bodies.” Also focused on the representation of the body in cinema is Lynda Susana Widya Fatmawaty et al.’s “The Politics of Gendered Subjects in Indonesian Post-Reform Films.”

Some essays in this issue are critical inquiries into processes of narrating the nation, which as Homi Bhabha astutely observes, is a process that “does not merely draw attention to its language and rhetoric…but also…attempts to alter the conceptual object itself” (p. 18). Kavitha Ganesan’s “Which tongue? The Imported Colonial Standard or Motherland Vernacular? Exploring “Death” as the Birth of Postcolonial Malaysia in Muthammal Palanisamy’s Funeral Chant” examines two versions of a funeral chant (written in English and Tamil) to elaborate on how death functions as a “metaphor to the birth of the nation” with the aim of demonstrating how a form of narrative in-betweeness that emerges out of the process of translation becomes a way within which a “diasporic Indian’s ‘becoming’ national identity is reconstructed.” Louie Jon A. Sánchez’s “The Teleserye Story: Three Periods of the Evolution of the Filipino TV Soap Opera” posits that the teleserye (Philippine TV soap opera) is a cultural form that is “reflective of the country’s life and times, its evolution interconnected with the ebb and flow of Philippine history.” Niccolo Rocamora Vitug’s “Pop Song Translations by Rolando Tinio as Script and Subversion of the Marcos Regime” examines the arguably ambivalent and complicated politics of a Philippine National Artist by paying attention to his song translations. Jie Zeng and Tian Yang’s “English in the Philippines from the Perspective of Linguistic Imperialism” examines the advantages and disadvantages of the continued dominance of the colonial language in the Philippines. Marikit Tara Alto Uychoco’s “Apostol’s Creed: Unveiling the Political Fictions of Colonialism and Nation in the Diasporic Novel” revisits the tension between postcolonial studies and postmodern theory and attempts to locate global critique in a contemporary metafictional novel.

There are also essays included in this collection that are concerned with how markets impact cultural production, reception, and consumption. Maria Gabriela P. Martin’s “Autopoetics, Market Competence, and the Transnational Author” participate in what has seemingly become its scholarly genre: the critique of postcolonial studies. Her essay examines how “program fiction” standardizes texts marketed as postcolonial, a process that speaks to the “auratic authority of postcolonial studies in the First world literary marketplace.” Io Chun Kong’s “Revisiting theatre of the minoritarian in neoliberalism: The Embodied Memories in Denise Uyehara’s and Dan Kwong’s Auto-performances” examines how minoritarian artists negotiate to work in a neoliberal environment. Kong examines auto-performances not merely as forms of individual aesthetic expression but as a politics of multiculturalism.

We hope that the works included in this special issue become an invaluable and generative resource to scholars working in the field. The final words of gratitude must then be offered to the readers of Rupkatha for their dependably gracious gift of attention. Thank you.  

 References

Bhabha, H. (1990). “Introduction: Narrating the Nation,” Nation and Narration. London and NY:

Routledge. 14-30.

Jeremy De Chavez is Assistant Professor of Literatures in English in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China.

 

Introduction to Antiquarian Chinese Book Collections in Contemporary Macao

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[wp-svg-icons icon=”user” wrap=”i”] Chon Chit TANG [wp-svg-icons icon=”envelop” wrap=”i”]  

University of Macau, China.

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 1, January-March, 2022, Pages 1–5. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n1.06

Abstract received:  31 March 2021 | Complete article received: 6 June 2021 | Accepted: 30 August 2021 | First Published: 05 February 2022

(This article is published under the Themed Issue Contemporary East and Southeast Asian Literary and Cultural Studies)
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Introduction to Antiquarian Chinese Book Collections in Contemporary Macao

Abstract

This essay briefly discusses the historical development of the society of Macao, the book collection systems and categories adopted within Macao, major characteristics of antiquarian Chinese books in Macao, and their relationship with the culture of Macao.

Keywords: antiquarian Chinese book collections, social culture, Macao

Translingual, Transcultural, and Transboundary Sceneries: Aesthetic Ideas and Discursive Practice in Yu Dafu’s Landscape Writing

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[wp-svg-icons icon=”user” wrap=”i”] Yidan Wang [wp-svg-icons icon=”envelop” wrap=”i”]  

Duke University

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 1, January-March, 2022, Pages 1–17. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n1.05

Abstract received:  31 March 2021 | Complete article received: 2 June 2021 | Revised article received: 5 Dec 2021 | Accepted: 16 Dec 2021 | First Published: 05 February 2022

(This article is published under the Themed Issue Contemporary East and Southeast Asian Literary and Cultural Studies)
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Translingual, Transcultural, and Transboundary Sceneries: Aesthetic Ideas and Discursive Practice in Yu Dafu’s Landscape Writing

Abstract

The ways in which nature is watched and represented have changed rapidly alongside modernization in 20th-century China. This can be regarded as the product of an epistemological transformation led by the encounter of Chinese and Western cultures. One of the representatives in this transformation and fusion of seeing is Yu Dafu, who, although generally known for his fiction, penned many travel writings and descriptions of nature in the 1930s. Regarding Yu’s travelogue as an embodiment of his translingual and transcultural reflections, this paper reviews previous studies on Yu’s travelogue and investigates its latent creativity and antinomy. This article delves into the stylistic and aesthetic features of Yu’s travelogue to uncover the conservatism and misogyny obscured beneath the seemingly value-neutral landscapes, arguing that Yu’s travelogue is a twofold amalgamation of genres and aesthetics. On the one hand, his travel writing is an adaption and combination of the German Baedeker guidebooks and traditional Chinese travel notes (Youji ??). On the other hand, Yu’s texts incorporate aesthetic criteria influenced by different natural concepts, demonstrating both his broad vision ahead of time and his conservatism. Yu’s writing on nature and landscapes, as a discursive practice motivated by the emergence of tourism in his era, is a transboundary dialogue between literature and commerce, and the elite and the general public, while also implicitly denying the common people access to the scenery space. Through a close reading of Yu’s frequently employed tropes—picturesque and feminized scenes—I establish an isomorphic relationship between his views on nature, art, and female. Finally, the antinomy inherent in Yu’s landscape imaginary constructed by creativity and conservatism points to the ambiguity of the New Culture.

Keywords: modern Chinese literature, landscape, space, travel writing, cross-cultural communication.

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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

Foreignized Translation of Onomatopoeia in The Last Lover

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[wp-svg-icons icon=”users” wrap=”i”] Minhui Xu [wp-svg-icons icon=”envelop” wrap=”i”] & Tingting Chen 

Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Macau, China.

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 1, January-March, 2022, Pages 1–12. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n1.04

Abstract received: 3 March 2021 | Complete article received: 19 June 2021 | Revised article received: 1 Sept 2021 | Accepted: 9 Sept 2021 | First Published: 05 February 2022

(This article is published under the Themed Issue Contemporary East and Southeast Asian Literary and Cultural Studies)
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Foreignized Translation of Onomatopoeia in The Last Lover

Abstract

The onomatopoeia in literary works frequently provokes translation problems and no consensus has been reached by translators.  This study aims to explore the translation of onomatopoeia between Chinese and English, two drastically different languages, with a case of the translation of Can Xue’s novel The Last Lover by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen.  A detailed textual analysis has detected three major translation strategies: italicized transliteration, italicized transliteration plus target equivalents, and italicized transliteration plus explanation, with the second one occupying a lion’s share. All the strategies demonstrate obvious efforts of foreignizing the translated onomatopoeia and produce a strengthened foreign effect. The facts that The Last Lover won the Best Translated Book in 2015 and that the statistics suggest a positive readers’ response show that onomatopoeia, non-arbitrary across languages, has its potential to be transferred successfully between languages and cultures. A foreignizing translation strategy makes it possible for the sound effects of the onomatopoeia of the original to be preserved and for the target readers to experience something foreign, while its acceptance suggests the increased tolerance for translated literary works in the target system.

Keywords: Translation of onomatopoeia, Can Xue, Foreignization.

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Precarity and Performativity in Post-Fordist Japanese Workplace: A Reading of Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman

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[wp-svg-icons icon=”user” wrap=”i”] Jaseel P [wp-svg-icons icon=”envelop” wrap=”i”] & Rashmi Gaur 

Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India.

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 1, January-March, 2022, Pages 1–11. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n1.03

Abstract received:  31 March 2021 | Complete article received: 2 June 2021 | Revised article received: 5 Dec 2021 | Accepted: 16 Dec 2021 | First Published: 05 February 2022

(This article is published under the Themed Issue Contemporary East and Southeast Asian Literary and Cultural Studies)
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Precarity and Performativity in Post-Fordist Japanese Workplace: A Reading of Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman

Abstract

The socio-economic phenomenon of post-Fordism strengthened the growing Japanese economy since the 1970s. However, the economic recession in the 1990s led to the birth of the precariat in Japan. A country known for permanent employment and long-term stability was replaced by policies that enabled a new class of temporary workers. These vulnerable part-time employees, also called freeters, are victims of anxiety and social pressure. They led a life of insecurity and hopelessness. This ontological vulnerability prevalent in modern workplaces has profound repercussions on gender relations and identity formation and attempts to resist and expose these hegemonic powers shape the central theme in Sayaka Murata’s deadpan comedy Convenience Store Woman (2018). The protagonist Keiko, a freeter herself, struggles to live up to the societal expectations of marriage, motherhood, and a stable career. The workspace, which the protagonist of the novel considers as her safest place despite being a forcibly normalised environment, could not hold its illusion of stability for long as it becomes a precarious space of crisis. Precarity experienced under post-Fordist capitalism forces institutionalised forms of recognition where the performances of identities are regulated and constructed to ensure survival. The textuality of the workspace in the novel parallels the world outside of it, making the convenience store a microcosm for the capitalist world after globalisation. With Judith Butler’s studies on gender performativity and precariousness, and textual analysis of the novel, the authors of this paper study how anxiety-ridden precarious living conditions can also become a foundation for alternative performances troubling gender categories, thereby transcending the narrow social scripts rooted in exclusion and inequality.

Keywords: Precariousness, Gender Performativity, Japan, Post-Fordist Capitalism, Resistance.

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Book Review: Twenty-First-Century Children’s Gothic: from the Wanderer to Nomadic Subject by Chloé Germaine Buckley

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Publisher: Edinburgh University Press. Date of Publication: 2018. Language: English.ISBN: 9781474430173

Reviewed by

[wp-svg-icons icon=”user” wrap=”i”] Zhao Yifan [wp-svg-icons icon=”envelop” wrap=”i”]

Ocean University of China

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 1, January-March, 2022, Pages 1–2. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n1.25

Complete review received: 6 Sept 2021 | Accepted: 14 Sept 2021 | First Published: 5 February 2022

(This review is published under the Themed Issue Contemporary East and Southeast Asian Literary and Cultural Studies)
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Book Review: Twenty-First-Century Children’s Gothic: from the Wanderer to Nomadic Subject by Chloé Germaine Buckley

Children’s literature has long intertwined with Gothic motifs, yet contrasting with the profound Gothic inheritance of children’s literature, the relevant research remains to be a relatively new direction, which has gained increasing popularity only in recent years. As the newest monograph in the field, Twenty-First-Century Children’s Gothic: from the Wanderer to Nomadic Subject brings out an exciting outlook to children’s Gothic studies, tracing through a range of children’s Gothic fictions between 2000 and 2015. Following Braidotti’s account of nomadic subjectivity, the book’s author Dr Chloé Germaine Buckley concludes that the theme of homelessness is a major concern for post-millennial children’s Gothic, which does not lead to despair but positive possibilities to new lives, regarding homelessness as nomadism—a concept echoing with the nomadic ethics of Deleuze’s philosophy, which expresses a process ontology that values change and motion over stability (Braidotti, 2013, p. 344).

Throughout the five chapters of her book, Buckley challenges the melancholic assumptions about children’s Gothic and reconfigures a negative condition into a productive precondition: homelessness as nomadism. The reading of homelessness as nomadism is a productive interpretation that transforms a catastrophic strike into a call to adventure. She takes the recurring theme of un-homing as a nomadic playfulness. This rejection of home is—as Deleuze would put it—the rejection of sameness, the rejection of static, sterile and self-replicating life. Buckley’s accounting for children’s Gothic emphasizes children’s subjectivity, which situates outside of a pedagogical framework. Having faith in children’s power of creating their own “line of flight,” Buckley regards a child as a self that is continually in the process of becoming and calls on new perspectives to account for children’s Gothic, instead of dwelling in the traditional humanist concepts and ego-relational psychology.

In her innovative and rigorous analysis, Buckley disagrees with many accepted claims and demonstrates her affirmative perspective of children’s Gothic, just like the post-millennial fictions she focuses on. For example, counter to the wide praise of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline as the exemplary work of “‘uncanny’ nature of childhood”(Buckley, 2018, p. 40), she argues that it offers a new intertextual mode of writing in the post-millennial period, which in this case is the intertextuality between Gothic, psychoanalysis and children’s fiction. And instead of Coraline, A Series of Unfortunate Events by Daniel Handler (under the pen name Lemony Snicket) is the one that exemplifies this new form of Gothic writing for children, which offers a promising hope rather than an “unlikely” hope (Olson, 2010, p. 522).

Buckley’s reading of post-millennial children’s Gothic offers a nomadic alternative. The monograph itself can be seen as a manifestation of the rhizomatic nature of 21st-century Gothic intertextuality, weaving studies of Gothic and children’s literature as well as Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts together, and at the same responding to the dominant humanist and constructivist approach to children’s fiction. Buckley demonstrates her ideas of homelessness as nomadism explicitly in well-written words, bringing out an exhilarating approach to Gothic and children’s literature alike. Just as Buckley’s intention, the book has contributed to a wider cultural and theoretical project of nomadic subjectivity, which is expressed by “emerging subjects-in-progress and new patterns of becoming” (Buckley, 2018, p. 204). However, this interpretation is only one possible mode among all the possibilities, which Buckley has made clear in her book that it is not a totalising account. Of course, there is still space for debate whether this “line of flight” is the most constructive direction free from the aporia of deconstruction since the becoming children in her interpretation remain unresolved. Besides, though the examples she chooses (including 8 fantasy novels in total) explicitly express what she has concluded, if another 8 exemplary novels were picked, it is possible to induct another central argument led by a perfectly logical chain. In the diversified and various post-modern cultures, to say homelessness as nomadism is the only trend might sound too inclusive. But what Buckley has done is to open a gateway for us to trace down and explore multiple understandings of children’s Gothic.

Affirmative and generative, Buckley’s book celebrates the nomadic existence of children in twenty-first-century children’s Gothic, initiating a viewpoint of nomadic subjectivity. Being willing to engage with difference and otherness, Buckley is a mobile and active subject herself. Readers can easily sense her passion for studies of Gothic and children’s literature in her book, which can be a good reference for those who share the same passion, for it provides a promising nomadic perspective and allows readers to review traditional approaches through her introduction and confrontation with a range of fundamental works in the related field for beginners to refer to.

References

Braidotti, R. (2013). Nomadic Ethics. Deleuze Studies, 7(3), 342-359

Buckley, C. G. (2018). Twenty-First-Century Children’s Gothic: from the Wanderer to Nomadic Subject. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 40+204

Olson, D. (2010). The Longest Gothic Goodbye in the World: Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. In D. Olsen (Ed.), 21st-Century Gothic: Great Gothic Novels Since 2000. MD: Scarecrow Press. 522

Zhao Yifan, a PhD candidate at the Ocean University of China, is especially interested in studies of children’s literature with dark motifs and its translation.

Book Review: Digital Humanities: Knowledge and Critique in a Digital Age by David M. Berry and Anders Fagerjord

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Publisher: Polity Press. Date of Publication: 2017. Language: English. ISBN: 9780745697659

Reviewed by

[wp-svg-icons icon=”user” wrap=”i”] Xi Li & Jie Zeng* [wp-svg-icons icon=”envelop” wrap=”i”]

Chungdu Normal University, Sichuan Province, China. *Corresponding author.

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 1, January-March, 2022, Pages 1–3. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n1.24

Received: 27 Feb 2021 | Revised : 29 Mar 2021 | 2nd round revision: 11 Dec 2021 | Accepted: 12 Dec 2021 | First Published: 05 February 2022

(This review is published under the Themed Issue Contemporary East and Southeast Asian Literary and Cultural Studies)
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Book Review: Digital Humanities: Knowledge and Critique in a Digital Age by David M. Berry and Anders Fagerjord

It is no doubt that we are living in an increasingly digitalized world. Seemingly ubiquitous, digitalization has significantly influenced our way of life and thinking. The rapid development and widespread application of digital technology has also stimulated the growth of scholarship. Amongst them, digital humanities is a relatively new discipline that lies at the intersection of computer technology and the humanities. By applying digital tools and technology to the traditional discipline of the humanities, digital humanities is an interdisciplinary and even transdisciplinary field that aims to advance our understanding of humanities as well as digital technology.

Digital Humanities: Knowledge and Critique in a Digital Age by David M. Berry and Anders Fagerjord is another work that joins the academic exploration of this nascent discipline. This slender and massively sourced volume outlines the history, eruptions, and epistemic contexts in which this burgeoning field has sprung. Berry and Anders point out that the digital humanities give us powerful theories, methods and tools for exploring new ways of being in a digital age. They provide a compelling guide by exploring the history, intellectual work, key arguments, and ideas of this emerging discipline. They also offer an important critique, suggesting ways in which the humanities can be enriched through computing as well as how cultural critique can transform the digital humanities.

Drawing on research in the fields of media and communications, digital media, sociology, informatics, and the humanities more broadly, this volume starts with an introductory chapter that offers an overview of this book. Barry and Fagerjord then take readers on an impressive voyage of the history, development, ways of thinking, infrastructures, methods, tools, and critical thinking of digital humanities. In chapter two “Genealogies of the Digital Humanities,” the authors delineate the origin, history, and development of this discipline. They also acknowledgement the contradictions and contentions, and multiple definitions that surrounds this discipline. Chapter 3 and chapter 4 examine the epistemology of digital humanities. In Chapter 3 “Computational Thinking,” fully aware of the interdisciplinary nature of digital humanities, the authors provide an example that attests to such nature rather than simply offering the algorithms. They also acknowledge the constructive role of programming language while pointing out that other approaches to humanities are also welcome. Following the discussion of algorithms, Chapter 4, titled “Knowledge Representation and Archives,” offers a quick view of the questions brought by and the practices related to the representation of knowledge. The fifth Chapter “Research Infrastructures” examines the significance of research infrastructures in supporting digital humanities and the conditions of possibility for widening humanities scholarship. The authors call for thinking about research infrastructure not only as material to be stored and preserved but also as a process that helps the transformation of primary sources and the generation of new forms of scholarship. Also, throughout this chapter, the authors suggest that research infrastructure not only exist in physical forms—libraries, labs, research centers—but also in virtual, hybrid forms, thus acknowledging the multi-dimension and development of research infrastructure. As the chapter title “Digital Methods and Tools” suggests, Chapter 6 focuses on the specific methods and approaches that are used to collect digital data in the discipline. The authors also argue that the scope of digital methods can be broadened by incorporating other approaches, such as software studies and the study of works that are not digitized but created digitally.  The seventh chapter “Digital Scholarship and Interface Criticism” looks into the question of the interface from a broad perspective, thinking about how to display, publish the results of digital humanities research. Supported by several examples, the authors contend that the understanding of the concept of the interface should go beyond simplistic thinking. Threading all the intersecting concerns in previous chapters, the final chapter “Towards a Critical Digital Humanities” summarizes the possible future directions for the digital humanities by relating it to the notion of critical digital humanities and the social, cultural, economic and political questions of recontextualization of the digital humanities in a social field. Raising a set of questions, this chapter emphasizes again and expands the scope for critical reflexivity.

The strength of this book lies in its sustained call for critical and dialectical thinking in understanding digital humanities. The field has been criticized for privileging techniques, such as technical tools and methods while neglecting the more traditional humanistic perspective. Throughout the volume, the authors have demonstrated a clear awareness of the hybrid or interdisciplinary nature of this discipline and always urge the importance of broadening the understanding and scope of digital humanities. Overall, Digital Humanities effectively demonstrates the computational way of doing humanities research. This volume has documented how digital humanities has grown and developed, mapped its challenges, and proposed new approaches of reconfiguring research and teaching to safeguard critical and rational thought in a digital age. In so doing, this book serves as a helpful guide for anyone who wants to have a basic understanding of digital humanities. Of course, the questions it raises and the suggestions it offers are also generative for future research.

Acknowledgement

Foundation Project: The general project of  Sichuan Education Informatization Application and Development Research Center “Neuroscience Research on Brain-like Intelligence and Foreign Language Education” (JYXX21-008)

References

Berry, David M., and Anders Fagerjord. (2017). Digital Humanities: Knowledge and Critique in a Digital Age. John Wiley & Sons.

Xi Li is a PhD candidate at the School of English Studies, Sichuan International Studies University and an associate professor at the School of Foreign Languages, Chengdu Normal University.

Jie Zeng is an Associate Professor at the School of Foreign Languages, Chengdu Normal University. Both of them are interested in digital humanities.

Book Review Chinese American Literature without Borders: Gender, Genre, and Form by King-Kok Cheung

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Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan | Date of Publication: 2016 | Language: English | ISBN: 978-1137453532

Reviewed by

[wp-svg-icons icon=”user” wrap=”i”] Windy Xiao Xue [wp-svg-icons icon=”envelop” wrap=”i”]

Department of English, University of Macau

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 1, January-March, 2022, Pages 1–3. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n1.23

Received: 30 April 2021 | Revised: 29 July 2021 | Accepted: 23 Aug 2021 | First Published: 5 February 2022

(This review is published under the Themed Issue Contemporary East and Southeast Asian Literary and Cultural Studies)
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Book Review Chinese American Literature without Borders: Gender, Genre, and Form by King-Kok Cheung

Chinese American Literature without Borders: Gender, Genre, and Form is a compelling model in the transnational comparative study, which examines the consciousness and aesthetics of Chinese American literature by throwing off shackles of language, culture and literary traditions.

“It looks to and from both the United States and China to reveal the multiple engagements of American-born and Sinophone writers”(1).

The author King-Kok Cheung, professor of Asian American Studies at UCLA, is an intellectual migrant standing at the crossroad between American and Chinese culture. This background affords her insight into the commonalities and differences between Chinese and Chinese American literature and the awareness of the significance of making the muffled voice heard on the two shores.

The whole book is divided into two parts, focusing on gender and genre & form respectively. The first part begins with the long-standing feud between Frank Chin and Maxine Hong Kingston, which Cheung points out seems to center on the problem of literary authenticity, but reveals the crisis of masculine identity in Asian American men, that is, males fear that their already asexual image would be further tarnished by Kingston’s memoir. To fully analyze this, in Chapter 2 Cheung introduces wen-wu dyad in traditional Chinese norms to disclose that reconstructing masculine identity by emphasizing wu (martial arts) and ignoring wen (arts) is a mistake as it merely caters to the western ideal; after using protagonists in China Boy by Gus Lee and Pangs of love by David Wong Louie to support this view in Chapter 3, Cheung further argues that this way to revive the image of Asian males is “a double bind” (p.94): if simply chasing the western ideal, they always fall short of it and risk restoring the patriarchal order; if sticking to Chinese wenren (poet-scholar), they feel afraid to perpetuate the existing stereotype. To solve this dilemma, Cheung proposes that Asian Americans should “resist one-way adaptation and turn racial stereotype on its head and into a source of inspiration” (p.95), recodifying traditional Chinese male image as manly, sexual and seductive, and teaching people from other cultural backgrounds to appreciate the charisma. Thereupon, in Chapter 4 and 5, she propounds and analyzes her ideal of masculinity—— Xu Zhimo, a romantic poet, and protagonists from American Knees by Shawn Wong, The Winged Seed by Li-Young Lee and Phoenix Eyes by Russell Leong, whose masculinity is demonstrated through arts and solicitude.

Part Two explores various innovations that Chinese and Chinese American writers have attempted. It first, in Chapter 6, zeros in on the innovation in the genre of autobiography, arguing that Chinese and Chinese American writers have fused familial, social and ethnic subjectivity into this genre, making this navel-gazing genre cross the boundaries of “generations, nations, epochs, race, gender, class, languages, accents, even across fact and fiction” (p.195). Chapter 7 examines a short story The Photograph written by Chinese author Bing Xin about a white woman’s life in China. Its uniqueness lies in its reversal of white gaze, and its description of the complexity of dynamics between two cultures. The last two chapters focus on innovation in language done by immigrant writer Ha Jin, who explores his bilingual style of expression, and poets Marilyn Chin and Russell Leong, who manoeuvre slanted allusion to Chinese tropes to bridge the gap between two cultures. 

One of the strengths of this study, in my opinion, is that the innovation of autobiographies is read through a transcultural lens. Going beyond the prolonged controversy of literary authenticity in this field, Cheung turns to analyze the root that generates the transformation of the autobiography. She adopts the concept of Gish Jen’s “two very different models of self-construal, independent and interdependent self” (p.173): the former is associated to the west, particularly America, while the latter is associated to the east, including China. Normally, autobiography is a western genre constantly showing the independent and individual self, while Asian American writers infuse this American “independent self” with the Chinese “interdependent self”. Thus, compared with Chinese autobiography writers, they stress self-invention and empowerment; compared with western autobiographers, they write less subjectively, constructing a multi-voiced narrative, taking account of the history and social environment, and fighting against the dominant culture. This fresh way to look at the innovation of Asian American literature is insightful and incisive. From such a vantage of point, we should not appreciate Asian American literature according to a single standard or mores but treat it as a convergence of two cultures.

Since this book covers literary works in both Chinese and English, an inconvenience that readers might encounter is the different translations of one single word or character. For example, Chapter 2 mentions several times Guan Yu, a character from a Chinese Classic The Three Kingdoms. But due to the different translations, he is expressed as Guan Yu (his name in Pinyin), or Guan Gong (his honorific in Pinyin), or Kwan Kung (his honorific in Cantonese). Therefore, it might be confusing for readers who are not familiar with Chinese culture. However, Cheung, who has predicted this potential difficulty for non-Chinese readers, adds an index at the end of this book which lists all the works and writers that she has mentioned in the book with different versions of names. In this way, readers can refer to this part for the clarification of these proper names.

To conclude, Chinese American Literature without Borders: Gender, Genre, and Form is an inclusive comparative study on Asian American Literature, which covers a wide range of works written by Sinophone, American-born, and immigrant writers, be they autobiographies which rewrite feminine codes, novels which present alternatives to masculinity, short stories which critique orientalism, or poems which assert heritage from both Chinese and Western cultures. The eclectic selection of literary works and the embracing attitude towards innovations in Asian American literature are not only intriguing to readers but also illuminating to postgraduate students and scholars in this field.

References

Cheung, K. (2016). Chinese American Literature without Borders: Gender, Genre, and Form. Palgrave Macmillan.

Windy Xiao Xue is currently an MA student in the English department of the University of Macau. She is researching in the field of Asian American literature.

Book Review: Translingual Words: An East Asian Lexical Encounter with English by Jieun Kiaer

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The book examines the history and reasons for the development of the translingual process, its two-way influence on culture and the lexicon of both parties combined with clear interpretations of linguistic terms.

Publisher: Routledge. Date of Publication: 2019. Language: English. ISBN: 9780367607517

Reviewed by

[wp-svg-icons icon=”user” wrap=”i”] Yi Xuan Jia [wp-svg-icons icon=”envelop” wrap=”i”]

University of Macau, Macau

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 1, January-March, 2022, Pages 1–4. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n1.22

Received: 16 Mar 2021 | Revised: 9 June 2021 | Accepted: 22 Oct 2021 | First Published: 5 February 2022

(This review is published under the Themed Issue Contemporary East and Southeast Asian Literary and Cultural Studies)
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Book Review: Translingual Words: An East Asian Lexical Encounter with English by Jieun Kiaer

The book examines the history and reasons for the development of the translingual process, its two-way influence on culture and the lexicon of both parties combined with clear interpretations of linguistic terms. The first chapter lays a theoretical foundation for the following two parts, which respectively introduce two formation pathways of the words. The author strives to raise awareness of translation theories beyond Europe and promotes the legitimacy of translingual words.

The author Jieun Kiaer is a Korean linguist who is currently the Associate Professor of Korean Language and Linguistics at the University of Oxford, UK. Kiaer’s research interests lie in theoretical linguistics, applied linguistics as well as Korean and East Asian linguistics. Before this book, Kiaer has published works in relevant fields, such as The History of English Loanwords in Korean (2014) and Hybrid Words in Korea and Japanese: A strange Brew or an Asset for Global English (2017). Based on previous research, this work expands the topics to East Asia. Familiar with both European and Asian culture, Kiaer gives down-to-earth examples of translingual words and analyzes them from linguistic, cultural and sociopolitical perspectives.

In terms of methodology, the online database Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is used as a criterion for tracing translingual words and defining their degree of fusion in English culture. The book also includes a large amount of content analysis of social media, such as how the words are used in the context of local culture, which also provides examples used in the book. Google Trends and Google N-gram are deployed for tracing the use of English words for both inner and outer English speakers.

 Basics of Translingual Words

The author considers terms like “borrowed words” or “loanwords” inappropriate given that English has a global identity and does not grant ownership to anyone. Therefore, Kiaer introduces and clarifies the definition of related terms, such as “foreign words,” “hybrid words,” “subcultural words” and “translingual words” in the four chapters of the first part. This is crucial because these terms are referred to throughout the book. Translingual words include the former three terms, and they can be English words in the form of Eastern languages or the romanization of Eastern languages.

Kiaer introduces the lexicon interaction model and the sunflower model to show how words’ meanings are negotiated and transformed between cultures, emphasizing the function of English as Lingua Franca (ELF). A large number of examples in Chinese, Korea and Japan are used to explain terms and theories. The author compares the translingual process of the three countries, revealing how socio-political and historic factors can affect the speed and way of lexical integration. Colonization was identified as the initiator of translanguaging, and words flow mainly from European countries to Asian countries in the earlier historical stage, though the distinction between foreign words and native words is blurred in the age of globalization and digitalization. According to ELF, the existence of hybrid words is justified since they are integrated into local culture (p. 20). This kind of words faces prejudice, though they are “an indispensable part of a multilingual society and may even be the greatest asset of our future lexicon” on the way to “a new world order in languages” (Graddol, 2006, p. 23) along with globalization. Subcultural words, the once considered short-lived words, are valued for allowing people of international backgrounds to communicate on the internet, especially in Japan and Korea, where non-English words enter the English lexicon despite the prejudice they receive in reality. Emoji is compared with translingual words since they both have shareability and semantic value.

 Words from East Asian to English Lexicon

As is mentioned above, translanguaging can be carried out in both directions, from East Asian to European, and vice versa. The second part of the book focuses on the analysis of East Asian words in English. The author starts from the history in the chapter “First Arrivals, ” then analyzes various media platforms with case studies to explore the settlement of the words and examines attitudes of the locals towards translingual words.

Kiaer sorts out the sequences of major historical and political stages that affect the process and differentiates degrees in which Chinese, Japanese and Korean enter the English lexicon. Graphs and statistics are used to demonstrate the difference in amount and categories of settled words from the three languages. Problems in defining East Asian words are carried out since most of them are of Sinitic origin, making it hard to categorize which one of the three countries the words come from. East Asian words’ popularization through Southeast Asian English is identified as a shortcut to translanguaging, but the author does not include a large number of ethnic Chinese as a possible explanation.

Content and data analysis in registers such as OED (dictionary), magazines and newspapers, and social media platforms are then used to discuss the settling patterns of the words. The three categories of media have incremental tolerance for translingual words. The author suggests that the conventional attitude of OED to translingual words should be shifted given that English is entering a “multilingual era” (p. 83). Case studies on The Times, New York Times, and The Economists show the life span and diverse preferences of Asian-born words in different press or countries. Social media platforms are where Asian words are treated as part of the English lexicon and used in daily life by the general public. Hashtags are used to trace the variation of Romanisations and the combination of the words. The former results from the unsmooth procedure (p. 89) and controversial pronunciation adaptation methods. Kiaer uses graphs to show the declining frequencies of “special treatment” (p. 93) to selected Asian words, which indicates their integration into the English lexicon in time.

To explore the effect of translinguism in the socio-linguistic field, the author takes a survey among British native university students and concludes that young British are open to translingual words and are more familiar with Japanese words. However, it should be noted that this result does not reflect the general attitude of young British, since education level may be a variable to openness to Asian words and culture.

 Words from English to East Asian Lexicon

The last part is about the existence of English words in East Asia. Kiaer introduces the directly imported words which closely link with history in the chapter, analyzes the formation mechanism and attitudes towards localized English words in the next chapter, and eventually identifies global words.

To analyze why and how the words are directly imported, the author introduces the linguistic landscape shift from Chinese (Sino-centric) to English in Korea and Japan, which results in the increasing familiarity of English rather than Chinese among citizens. Following Japan, Korea and China start to accept English as a language which brings in western culture and modernity. The expansion of the usage of words originated from English from science to genuine lexicon of daily life, from culture borrowing to westernization of local words can be observed and studied through media, where the author generalizes the way language usage pattern changes. Kiaer refers to survey results in Japan and Korea to conclude that the use of English words results simply from convenience with little prejudice towards the English words, though some scholars argue that the phenomenon reflects “flunkeyism towards the West” (Shin, 2009, p. 104). Linguistic experts believe it is beneficial for communication, though it raises awareness of the negative influence on the native lexicon.

Compared with Korea and Japan, China is much slower in exchanging lexicon with English words. Lexical exchanges are visible mainly on brand and shop names, in which semiotic values are adopted. The “non-sensical” (p. 134) use of English words in Taiwan is justified because of this. Kiaer refers to terms and theories in word-formation to explain the patterns of locally made word formation in Japanese and Korean as well as difficulties to hybrid Chinese with English. Four categories of global words are chosen for exploration and analysis: food words, fashion and cosmetic words, socio-cultural words and foreign branding. The author introduces their evolution and impact on the international lexicon, in which process the meaning of words expand.

The overall structure of the book is clear, presenting a complete view of the translanguaging phenomenon between the western and eastern worlds throughout history. The book shows the influence of history, politics, culture and language on each other, the fact that language is dynamic and is always negotiated by people, and forecasts the future trend of further translinguism. Terms and theories of linguistics are introduced with adequate frequency, plain explanation and examples, making the book both academic and friendly to newcomers. Nevertheless, the third part seems to be flooded with examples, making the logic harder to follow than previous chapters. The way of interpretation in this book respects the countries or regions mentioned in the book and the author puts the languages and their hybrid versions in equal positions. Kiaer sees the translingual process from a global view, which may result from her positive attitude towards translingual words, though it should be noted that the effect should be viewed more critically concerning its influence on local culture, education, and ideology. The book uses unsophisticated language to show research data and examples, which makes the book easily understood, even for those unfamiliar with Asian languages or without linguistic background.

References

Kiaer, J. (2019). Translingual Words: An East Asian Lexical Encounter with English (1st ed.). Routledge.

Kiaer, J. (2014). The history of English loanwords in Korean. Munich: LINCOM Europa.

Kiaer, J., & Bordilovskaya, A. (2017). Hybrid English words in Korean and Japanese: A strange brew or an asset for Global English? Asian Englishes, 19(2), 169–187.

Graddol, D. (2006). English Next (Vol. 62). London: British Council.

Shin, M.-S. (2009). The ‘Almighty English’ phenomenon in our era. Foreign Language Education Research, 12, 78–94.

Yi Xuan, Jia is currently finishing her bachelor’s degree at the University of Macau. Jia is especially enthusiastic about linguistics, cultural studies and education, where she wishes to continue her graduate studies.

 

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