Böcker av Andrea Bachner

Sinoglossia places the terms of embodiment, mediality, and translation at the center of analytical inquiry into Chinese and Sinophone cultures. Converging in the rubric of Sinoglossia, the chapters in this volume introduce a theory defined by cultural formations not overdetermined by Sinitic linguistic ties. The concept of Sinoglossia combines a heteroglossic and a heterotopian approach to the critical study of mediated discourses of China and Chineseness. From the history of physical examinations and queer subalternity to the cinematic inscription of Chineseness-as-landscape, and from Sinopop to the translational writings of Eileen Chang and Syaman Rapongan, this book argues for a flexible conceptualization of cultural objects, conditions, and contexts that draws attention to an array of polyphonic, multi-discursive, and multilingual articulations. In this new horizon of understanding, place or topos necessarily constitutes the possibility of friction and source of innovation.

New communication and information technologies provide distinct challenges and possibilities for the Chinese script, which, unlike alphabetic or other phonetic scripts, relies on multiple signifying principles. In recent decades, this multiplicity has generated a rich corpus of reflection and experimentation in literature, film, visual and performance art, and design and architecture, within both China and different parts of the West.Approaching this history from a variety of alternative theoretical perspectives, Beyond Sinology reflects on the Chinese script to pinpoint the multiple connections between languages, scripts, and medial expressions and cultural and national identities. Through a complex study of intercultural representations, exchanges, and tensions, the text focuses on the concrete "e;scripting"e; of identity and alterity, advancing a new understanding of the links between identity and medium and a critique of articulations that rely on single, monolithic, and univocal definitions of writing.Chinese writing-with its history of divergent readings in Chinese and non-Chinese contexts, with its current reinvention in the age of new media and globalization-can teach us how to read and construct mediality and cultural identity in interculturally responsible ways and also how to scrutinize, critique, and yet appreciate and enjoy the powerful multi-medial creativity embodied in writing.