Sinkwan Cheng
New to academia.edu; more of her publications not listed here available upon request;
Bio available at a number of websites at different research institutes in Europe and North America.
Bio available at a number of websites at different research institutes in Europe and North America.
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Papers by Sinkwan Cheng
philosophies of geming from Yijing [Book of Changes] until the 20th century;
includes a comparison of the semantic changes of “revolution” and geming when both were transplanted from a cyclical to a linear temporal framework;
also includes a brief discussion of the philosophical and historical (dis-)continuities between the French Revolution and the Cultural Revolution;
KEYWORDS: Conceptual history, Koselleck, translation history and the will to power, translation and (post-) colonialism, translation and Chinese modernity, translation and Chinese nationalism
Subject’s message being returned from its Other in inverted form. In the words of the Tang Emperor Taizhong as recorded in both The Old Tang History and The New Tang History, ‘The Other as my mirror helps me understand my strengths and weaknesses’. The new historical method I develop via Lacan and Chinese historiography allows me to go beyond postcolonial reading of the subaltern’s ‘copy’ of the master’s ideas as distortion, mimicry, or creative transformation. Instead of making the
subaltern’s translation a mere parody of the Master—subversive or not—I highlight how the Chinese (mis)-translations captures certain truths about the Master which the latter cannot see in himself.
Key Words: ‘right’; Benjamin; Koselleck; Lacan; postcolonial studies; Opium Wars
My discussion of the structural similarities among these three kinds of cross-national activities intersects with my examination of the historical connections of the Olympic Games to translation and international relations.
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*Supposedly the Latin rendition of the Greek word philia, there is nonetheless a significant semantic difference between amicitia and its Greek counterpart. Both the Greek and the Latin terms are commonly rendered as “friendship” in English. But the Latin word designates strategic political association rather than genuine closeness with mutual ethical commitment. The strategic term allows the Romans to hypocritically and ruthlessly pursue their own interests in the international arena in the name of “equality” and “friendship.” As Richard Billows points out, although amicitia was supposedly a relationship between social equals, in reality it was rarely equal. When transferred to the arena of international relations, “amicitia was never an equal relationship. The Romans always viewed themselves, rightly or wrongly, as the superiors in the relationship, the ones to whom gratitude and its accompanying officium of deference were owed. And they were quite ruthless, as well as hypocritical, in exploiting relations of amicitia to their advantage in pursuit of their international policies and objectives (320).
The semantic manipulations that took place in the Roman translation of the Greek term philia provide a good illustration of a central argument in this paper: namely that diplomatic translation is itself an act of diplomacy—of subverting the authority of the source text in the guise of paying homage to it, and of pursuing a different agenda while claiming to be merely translating the original expression. As Billows puts it, “though in outward form the Romans operated in terms of the Greek concept of philia, in fact they understood philia in terms of their own rather different notion of amicitia, and applied it in a very one-sided way at that” (322).
Conceptual History of "The West" vs. "Europe": footnote 17 on pp. 150-152
includes my own translations of passages from The Analects, Mencius, and other Chinese classics;
the version displayed here is merely the galley proofs of the first few pages. Please approach the publisher for the print version of the complete essay.
2. European perspectives on diaspora
3. critiquing Adorno by engaging the thoughts of Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Lacan, and Derrida
(The chapter was singled out as "superb" by the reader for Sage Press).
Chinese Cinema in the Global Age
This essay strikes new paths for investigating the politics of translation and the (non-) universality of the concept of “human rights” by engaging them in a critical dialogue. Part I of my essay argues that a truly universal concept would have available linguistic equivalents in all languages. On this basis, I develop translation into a tool for disproving the claim that the concept human rights is universal. An inaccurate claim to universality could be made to look valid, however, if one culture dominates over others, and manages to impose its own concepts and exclude competitors. Part II explores how human rights, initially a modern Western concept, became more and more universalized as a result of the global reach of Western political and economic power. I attempt to shed new light on the subject by investigating the role of translation in bringing about the global hegemony of Western legal and political languages and concepts. Since translation always involves a choice of foregrounding one of the two languages and cultures involved, the translator is a power broker who can promote one voice at the expense of the other. My examples for conducting this investigation are the key contributions made by China and the West to the drafting of the UDHR: with ren and rights representing respectively the West and China’s proposed solutions to crimes against humanity in the immediate aftermath of World War II. While the concept rights became increasingly assimilated into the Chinese language along with her repeated defeats by colonial powers (and was already firmly established in the Chinese vocabulary by the time of the drafting of the UDHR), ren by contrast has never been included by any Western language and culture.
philosophies of geming from Yijing [Book of Changes] until the 20th century;
includes a comparison of the semantic changes of “revolution” and geming when both were transplanted from a cyclical to a linear temporal framework;
also includes a brief discussion of the philosophical and historical (dis-)continuities between the French Revolution and the Cultural Revolution;
KEYWORDS: Conceptual history, Koselleck, translation history and the will to power, translation and (post-) colonialism, translation and Chinese modernity, translation and Chinese nationalism
Subject’s message being returned from its Other in inverted form. In the words of the Tang Emperor Taizhong as recorded in both The Old Tang History and The New Tang History, ‘The Other as my mirror helps me understand my strengths and weaknesses’. The new historical method I develop via Lacan and Chinese historiography allows me to go beyond postcolonial reading of the subaltern’s ‘copy’ of the master’s ideas as distortion, mimicry, or creative transformation. Instead of making the
subaltern’s translation a mere parody of the Master—subversive or not—I highlight how the Chinese (mis)-translations captures certain truths about the Master which the latter cannot see in himself.
Key Words: ‘right’; Benjamin; Koselleck; Lacan; postcolonial studies; Opium Wars
My discussion of the structural similarities among these three kinds of cross-national activities intersects with my examination of the historical connections of the Olympic Games to translation and international relations.
-------------------------------
*Supposedly the Latin rendition of the Greek word philia, there is nonetheless a significant semantic difference between amicitia and its Greek counterpart. Both the Greek and the Latin terms are commonly rendered as “friendship” in English. But the Latin word designates strategic political association rather than genuine closeness with mutual ethical commitment. The strategic term allows the Romans to hypocritically and ruthlessly pursue their own interests in the international arena in the name of “equality” and “friendship.” As Richard Billows points out, although amicitia was supposedly a relationship between social equals, in reality it was rarely equal. When transferred to the arena of international relations, “amicitia was never an equal relationship. The Romans always viewed themselves, rightly or wrongly, as the superiors in the relationship, the ones to whom gratitude and its accompanying officium of deference were owed. And they were quite ruthless, as well as hypocritical, in exploiting relations of amicitia to their advantage in pursuit of their international policies and objectives (320).
The semantic manipulations that took place in the Roman translation of the Greek term philia provide a good illustration of a central argument in this paper: namely that diplomatic translation is itself an act of diplomacy—of subverting the authority of the source text in the guise of paying homage to it, and of pursuing a different agenda while claiming to be merely translating the original expression. As Billows puts it, “though in outward form the Romans operated in terms of the Greek concept of philia, in fact they understood philia in terms of their own rather different notion of amicitia, and applied it in a very one-sided way at that” (322).
Conceptual History of "The West" vs. "Europe": footnote 17 on pp. 150-152
includes my own translations of passages from The Analects, Mencius, and other Chinese classics;
the version displayed here is merely the galley proofs of the first few pages. Please approach the publisher for the print version of the complete essay.
2. European perspectives on diaspora
3. critiquing Adorno by engaging the thoughts of Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Lacan, and Derrida
(The chapter was singled out as "superb" by the reader for Sage Press).
Chinese Cinema in the Global Age
This essay strikes new paths for investigating the politics of translation and the (non-) universality of the concept of “human rights” by engaging them in a critical dialogue. Part I of my essay argues that a truly universal concept would have available linguistic equivalents in all languages. On this basis, I develop translation into a tool for disproving the claim that the concept human rights is universal. An inaccurate claim to universality could be made to look valid, however, if one culture dominates over others, and manages to impose its own concepts and exclude competitors. Part II explores how human rights, initially a modern Western concept, became more and more universalized as a result of the global reach of Western political and economic power. I attempt to shed new light on the subject by investigating the role of translation in bringing about the global hegemony of Western legal and political languages and concepts. Since translation always involves a choice of foregrounding one of the two languages and cultures involved, the translator is a power broker who can promote one voice at the expense of the other. My examples for conducting this investigation are the key contributions made by China and the West to the drafting of the UDHR: with ren and rights representing respectively the West and China’s proposed solutions to crimes against humanity in the immediate aftermath of World War II. While the concept rights became increasingly assimilated into the Chinese language along with her repeated defeats by colonial powers (and was already firmly established in the Chinese vocabulary by the time of the drafting of the UDHR), ren by contrast has never been included by any Western language and culture.