Rey Chow, “Film as Ethnography: or, Translation Between Cultures in the
Postcolonial World,” Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and
Contemporary Chinese Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996)
epigram on the other - role of the other in constituting the self
The Deadlock of the Anthropological Situation
how do we see the other - thru anthropology which is in deadlock
p.177 - in the academic we can only think the non-West by anthropologizing it, creating a oneway street of knowledge
- depictions of culture are interpreted thru how they connect with the asymmetry of Western
power, so the response is nativist defense of tradition
- wants to get beyond this by connecting ethnography with translation
The Primacy of To-Be-Looked-At-Ness
subjective origins of ethnography thru visuality - the sense of being looked at (by
anthropologists) is built into the way the non-Western culture looks - and this has a gender
register - and into the way it looks at itself -p.180 this is an amplification of the vision of ethnography
being-looked-at-ness is “the primary event in cross-cultural representation”
Translation and the Problem of Origins
p.184 “translation is an activity that immediately problematizes the ontological hierarchy of
languages”
p.185 Benjamin - translation is a putting together and shows that the original also was put
together - the original as not only a self-différance but also “a process of standing-for-something
else that is already put together in the original - thus the translator releases his own language
p.188 deconstruction is negative and still holds onto the original, except as a negative or
illusion of unity
for Benjamin, translation is both a deconstruction and a liberation - by letting the foreign
affect the self - and thus “anti-ethnocentric” how then does one move toward the other? and how to theorize this?
Translation as “Cultural Resistance”
p.192 cultural studies reverses Western dominance by revalorizing the original and if it reverses
the asymmetrical power relations of the two it maintains the hierarchy between original and
translation
The “Third Term”
can we theorize translation between cultures without valorizing some “original”? - [me- but why
try to do this except for globalization?]
need intersemiotic practices - culture into other mediums like film - two already mediated forms,
so avoid “representation”
deconstruction cannot give a sense of the new medium into which culture is translated
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p.195 must see East and West as equally corrupt participants in contemporary world
culture
Weakness, Fluidity, and the Fabling of the World
p.197 cultural translation - rethought as the co-temporal exchange and contention between
different social groups deploying different sign systems not unifiable into one
media weaken the literary foundations of Western domination
weaken reality into fable
The Light of the Arcade
p.199 what is transmittable is also accessible
p.201 literalness of the arcade of mass media leads to the fabulous constructedness of the
world
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