SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This is a study of three twentieth-century authors who wrote extensively about China while living in diaspora. These were Eileen Chang 張愛玲 (1920-1995), Robert van Gulik 高羅佩 (1910-1967), and S. I. Hsiung 熊式一 (1902-1991). Despite their obvious differences, they had three things in common: (1) they were contemporary with each other and published their major works during roughly the same decades (1930s-1970s); (2) they each attempted to transplant some quintessentially Chinese literary elements to the English-speaking world, testing the ability of their host culture to accommodate alien intrusions, rather than simply cater to existing stereotypes and expectations; (3) as a strategy for mediating between the donor and host literary cultures, all three of them practised self-translation. The theoretical problem of ‘Chineseness,’ as expounded by such scholars as Rey Chow since the early 2000s, is something to be deconstructed and debunked, as the concept often denotes a kind of cultural essentialism—Sinocentrism—that draws an imaginary boundary between China and the rest of the world. Deeply rooted in the historically conditioned reaction to the West and past victimisation under Western imperialism, this habitual obsession with Chineseness often manifests itself as a narcissistic, megalomanic affirmation of China, and even arrogance and self-aggrandizement. While readily acknowledging the soundness of this argument, this study proposes the concept of ‘obtrusive Chineseness’ to describe a precursor of this largely postcolonial and post-socialist phenomenon. Before postcolonialism gained wide credence in the late 1970s, it was common for writings in Western languages (by Western and Chinese authors alike) to present Orientalist visions of China and the Chinese that unapologetically pandered to cultural and racial stereotypes, so much so that even authors who made a point of avoiding such literary chinoiseries have often been subject to similar criticisms. In fact, all three authors in question have faced such accusations. This study argues however that these authors consciously strived to present more ‘authentic’ visions of China by directly imposing Chinese literary conventions on the host literary culture, and, in doing so, paradoxically bridged the seemingly impassable chasms between two drastically different literary traditions. It is this approach to diasporic writing that this study terms ‘obtrusive Chineseness.’ In order to achieve their respective goals, all three authors resorted to self-translation, although on very different scales and at different junctures of their writing careers. Once thought to be a marginal phenomenon, the practice of self-translation has attracted much interest since the 1970s, but much more attention has been paid to the dissimilarities between different versions of a bilingual text than to the continuities across linguistic borders. Following Jan Walsh Hokenson and Marcella Munson’s proposition, this study aims to turn the critical and theoretical approach around. Only by paying closer attention to the common core of the bilingual text, that is, the textual intersections and overlaps of versions, can one begin to circumscribe the bilingual text more clearly. This is exactly what all three authors in question strived to achieve through self-translation—bridging rather than widening gaps. The three case studies have been deliberately chosen to reflect not only the diversity of translingual practice through self-translation but also the gender and racial dynamics therein. Chang produced bilingual versions of many of her major works throughout her writing career. In contrast, Robert van Gulik and S. I. Hsiung each resorted to self-translation at a crucial juncture: Gulik initially intended to build a career writing in Chinese, but later had to abandon the project after only one instalment and began writing mainly in English a series of detective novels aimed at Western audiences; Hsiung started to translate his English plays into Chinese only after they had achieved success in the West in an effort to bring his literary creations ‘home’. Chang, the only female of the group and the only lifelong practitioner of self-translation, remained largely obscure in the English-speaking world during her lifetime only to be canonized posthumously, while the other two male authors all achieved great fame but have since been largely forgotten in the West. It is also noteworthy that van Gulik, a Dutch diplomat, presented himself as a faithful interpreter of China (his spiritual homeland), a claim strengthened by his other identity as a renowned Sinologist. This layered diversity of identities lends itself readily to a comparative study analysing the drastically different sets of cultural capital they possessed as authors. This thesis also seeks to promote a contextual/cultural approach to the study of self-translation. The predominant approach so far has been one that focuses on the dissimilarities rather than continuities between different linguistic versions of a bilingual text, but a list of differences, however accurate, sheds little light on the phenomenon of duality—in other words, the common core of the bilingual text. Only by turning the critical and theoretical approach around and seeking continuities across language versions can we begin to englobe the literary as well as linguistic and cultural dimensions of the bilingual text. In order to achieve this goal, a deep contextual/cultural approach has been employed throughout the three case studies—that is to say, an approach that stresses first and foremost the creative context in which a bilingual text is produced and the often complicated process through which cultural elements are negotiated and transmuted.