Cultural Transformations. (Cross Cultures: Readings in the Post Colonial Literatures and Cultures in English)

373 Pages·2010·26.88 MB·English

by  Henry Johnson

Cultural Transformations
CROSS
Readings in Post/Colonial
ULTURES Literatures and Cultures in English

125

SERIES EDITORS
Gordon Collier Bénédicte Ledent Geoffrey Davis
(Giessen) (Liège) (Aachen)
CO-FOUNDING EDITOR
(cid:103)Hena Maes–Jelinek
Cultural Transformations
Perspectives on Translocation
in a Global Age
Edited by
Chris Prentice, Vijay Devadas, and Henry Johnson

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2010
Cover Painting: Zeke Wolf, Vertical Forest (2008)
(oil on canvas, 700 cm x 1200 cm)
Courtesy of the artist
www.zekewolf.co.nz
Cover design: Pier Post
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for
documents - Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN: 978-90-420-3003-9
E-Book ISBN: 978-90-420-3004-6
© Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2010
Printed in The Netherlands
Table of Contents
 —————————

Acknowledgements vii
Illustrations ix

Introduction
CHRIS PRENTICE, VIJAY DEVADAS, AND HENRY JOHNSON xi

PART 1: TEXTUAL TRANSLOCATIONS

Earth, World, Planet:
Where Does the Postcolonial Literary Critic Stand?
DIANA BRYDON 3

Affirming Diasporas as National Antinomies
VIJAY DEVADAS 31

Australian Infernos:
Janette Turner Hospital ’s Translation of
Dante’s Hell into Contemporary Australia
MARY MCLAUGHLIN 51

Between Mother Tongue, Grandfather Tongue and Foreign Tongue:
A Turk in Translation
ALYTH GRANT AND KATE ROY 73

A Poetics of Translocation:
Yang Lian’s Auckland and Lyn Hejinian’s Leningrad
JACOB EDMOND 105
PART 2: MUSICAL TRANSLOCATIONS

Fusión Rapa Nui:
Mito Manutomatoma and the Translocation
of Easter Island Music in Chilean Popular Culture
DAN BENDRUPS 137

Interactive Environments and the Context of Heritage:
Culturally Engaged Research and Facilitation in Small-Island Societies
PHILIP HAYWARD 159

Constructing an ‘Other’ from Your ‘Own’:
Localizing, Nationalizing, and Globalizing Nnzu (Nenes)
HENRY JOHNSON 179

PART 3: VISUAL TRANSLOCATIONS

Rejecting Words:
Illiteracy, Silence, and the Visual
PAOLA VOCI 209

Integral Culture:
Agora-Phobia at the Polynesian Cultural Centre
CHRIS PRENTICE 239

The Kumars at No. 42:
The Dynamics of Hyphenation, or Did Sanjeev Take Parkie Down?
BRETT NICHOLLS AND ANDY BARRATT 275

Transl(oc)ating the P layer:
Are Some Computer- and Video-Game Players
Also Unpaid Workers in the Information Economy?
SIMON RYAN 307

Notes on Contributors 321
Index 325
Acknowledgements
 —————————

We would like to thank all the contributors to the volume for their work
and for their continued support and patience throughout this project. We
would also like to express appreciation to John Drummond, who con-
vened the University of Otago Cultural Transformations Research Net-
work that brought these scholars together, to the Division of Humanities,
University of Otago, for financial support for the Network’s activities, and
to the University of Otago Departments of English, Music, and Media,
Film and Communication Studies, for generous financial and administra-
tive support. We are grateful to Andy Barratt and Stephanie Broege for
their input as research assistants at early stages in the project, to Linda
Brown for handling further administrative matters, and to Gordon Collier,
Technical Editor for Rodopi’s Cross/Cultures series, for his painstaking
work in the preparation of the manuscript. Finally, we are grateful to artist
Zeke Wolf, who kindly permitted us to use his work for the cover image.
Illustrations
 —————————

Figure 1: The Rapa Nui Pub in Bellavista, Santiago, decorated with
characteristic Rapanui symbols. Photograph by the author 152
Figure 2: Mito y Fusión Rapa Nui at the Tahai archaeological site.
Photograph by the author 152
Figure 3: The ‘cow-piss’ character 228
Figure 4: “Book from the Sky” (1987–91), Xu Bing. Hand printed
books, ceiling and wall scrolls printed from wood letter-
press type using false Chinese characters. Dimensions vari-
able, Installation view at “Crossings,” National Gallery of
Canada, Ottawa (1998), dimensions variable. Courtesy Xu
Bing Studio. 233
Figure 5: One of Xu Bing’s character blocks from “Book from the
Sky” (1987–91). Detail of one set (four volumes) of hand-
sewn thread-bound books printed from woodblock and
wood letterpress type using false Chinese characters, each
volume 46 x 30 cm (closed). Courtesy Xu Bing Studio. 234
Figure 6: The entrance/exit of the PCC McDonald’s 248
Figure 7: Mural – saluting the US flag 248

Figure 8: Photograph housed inside 250
Figure 9: Publicity poster for the PCC 250
Figure 10: Spaces of arrival – entry 259
Figure 11: Spaces of arrival – restaurant forecourt 259
Figure 12: Mori canoe pageant 262
Figure 13: Samoan ‘language lesson’ performance 262
Figure 14: Advertising the PCC 269
Figure 15: Advertising the PCC 271
(Figures 6–13: all photos by Chris Prentice.)
Introduction
Cultural Transformations:
Perspectives on Translocation in a Global Age
 —————————

CHRIS PRENTICE, VIJAY DEVADAS,
AND HENRY JOHNSON,

We need to situate the debate about identity within all those histo-
rically specific developments and practices which have disturbed the
relatively ‘settled’ character of many populations and cultures, above
all in relation to the processes of globalization […] and the processes
of forced and ‘free’ migration which have become a global phenome-
non of the so-called ‘postcolonial’ world.1

T
RANSLATION HAS EMERGED as a central problematic of our
times. With its etymological root suggesting to ‘carry across’,
‘translation’ implies translocation. In the wake of Walter Benja-

min’s account of translation as a mode that is never static but performs,
striving not to be as close as possible to the original but to renew it, trans-
lation further implies transformation. Translation applies to media, cul-
tures, and peoples as much as to languages. Diasporic population flows
and the additional culture flows brought about by technology and the glo-
balization of the media are transforming our world, globally and locally.
Many of the world’s peoples are living ‘in translation’: inhabiting trans-

1 Stuart Hall, “Introduction: Who Needs Identity,” in Questions of Cultural Identity,
ed. Stuart Hall & Paul du Gay (London, Thousand Oaks CA & New Delhi: Sage,
1996): 4.