Treacherous Translation: Taiwanese Tactics of Intervention in Transnational Cultural Flows

If transcultural borrowings and translations are common practices in modern times, these translational practices have never ceased to worry postcolonial historiographers. Historically, two modes of historical narrative are often evoked in the discussion of cultural translation from the West to the East: the narrative of transition and the narrative of confrontation. While the former is predicated on a Westerncentric conception of linear time which converts cultural differences into a temporal hierarchy with the West occupying the top, ”advanced” position, the latter tends to define the encounter between the East and the West in confrontational terms.This paper proposes to theorize the problem of cultural translation in terms other than those of transition or confrontation. Taking Taiwan modernism as an example, I argue how ”betrayal” and ”simulation” operate as tactics of intervention that open up the possibility of agency for Taiwan modernist writers in the practice of cultural translation. I discuss the historical materiality that shaped these treacherous translational practices and finally relate the issue of cultural translation to the issue of the constitution of identity category.