Poetics of Linking in Cultural Translation: Illuminating a Network of Word-Images in “Genji Cultures”

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

“Why is it impossible to imagine, much less write, a work like Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish within Asian area studies?” Thus begins Michael Robert Dutton’s provocative 2002 article, “Lead Us Not into Translation: Notes toward a Theoretical Foundation for Asian Studies.” This panel responds to Dutton’s call to return to language—the very core of Asian Studies—not merely as a tool for translating Asia for the West, but to engage with “the question of language theoretically.” This panel engages with a particular kind of language—the poetics of linking as manifested in what we call “Genji cultures.” This term refers to meaning-making systems centering around The Tale of Genji (TG, ca. early 11th century)—a masterpiece of Japanese literature and arguably the first psychological novel in world literature—specifically as an originary source of cultural translational practices over the centuries, generating a network of commentaries, adaptations, and translations both within Japan and abroad. Ryu illuminates TG itself already as a form of cultural translation bringing into focus Heian Japan gender ideology through the heroines’ poetic voices and silences. Peterson investigates the linkage between word and image in later cultural allusions to TG, while Wang focuses on Chinese characters, another form of word-image, as an instrument of cultural translation to analyze the linkage between TG and its translations in modern Korean and Chinese. Sarra discusses how the poetics of linking illuminated by these presentations leads to articulating a theory of cultural translation as a meta-language beyond the East-West divide.

Area of Study

• Japan

Session Organizer

• Catherine Ryu, Michigan State University

Chair

• Catherine Ryu, Michigan State University

Individual Presentations

• Poetics of Linking via Her Final Words: Listening in to Ukifune’s Voices in Genji Monogatari - Catherine Ryu, Michigan State University

• Birds That Fly on Shared Wing: The Poetics of Linking through the Yang Guifei Legend in Genji Monogatari and Yoru no Nezame - Joannah Peterson, Indiana University

• Poetics of Linking through Chinese Characters: Entering into the Translated Realms of Genji Monogatari - Sook Young Wang, Inha University

Discussant

• Edith Sarra, Indiana University