Abstract
The theorization of the Sinophone concept has attracted various criticisms to date, but perhaps the two most popular strands concern its language-centrism and its apathy towards translation. To overcome these limitations, this paper proposes Sinoglossia as an alternative but complementary theory that is defined by culture in the way that the Sinophone is defined by language. This paper situates a series of Sinophone martial arts (wuxia) films and the Anglophone film M. Butterfly (1993) within a broader framework of “entangled analysis.” Specifically, it draws on transgender theory to examine the representations and meanings of castration as a ground of comparing a body of works that tend to be considered separately. Read in this way, the films loosen representational claims about China—from earnest ties to Sinitic languages, scripts, or texts—make room for multi- and extra-linguistic comparisons across shifting parameters of translation, and strategically position Chinese culture at the center of Sinoglossiac theoretical critique.
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Notes
- 1.
I first embarked on the theorization of Sinoglossia together with Chien-hsin Tsai and Andrea Bachner in preparation for the conference in Austin in 2014.
- 2.
On queer Sinophone production, see Chiang (2013).
- 3.
On minority subjects’ negotiation with mainstream culture, see Muñoz (1999).
- 4.
On the history of being human, see Smith (2007).
- 5.
Here, Chow is drawing on Lacan (1981, pp. 91–104).
- 6.
Although de Lauretis (1999, p. 330) calls attention to Song’s yearning in intriguing ways, her reading tends to take for granted the homosexual nature of Song’s desire and inadvertently risks ontologizing the myth of a “repressed truth” about the normativity of the real penis—Song’s penis. Regardless of their physical make-up, the butterfly fantasy can easily operate in a reciprocal fashion between Song and Gallimard, making a primordial presupposition of homosexuality always volatile.
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Chiang, H. (2017). Sinoglossia Incarnate: The Entanglements of Castration across the Pacific. In: Lin, X., Haywood, C., Mac an Ghaill, M. (eds) East Asian Men. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55634-9_6
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