On the Origin of Transculturalism: A Study Into the Western Academic Context and its Chinese Translation

1 Introduction

With China gaining more opportunities to expose and spread its own culture worldwide in the international communication and globalization context, more scholarly attention should be paid to the question of how to theorize the cultural interlocution as well as its integration. In this sense, many scholars argue that a breakthrough of the Western-based intercultural theoretical framework is in need when it comes to the issue on how to articulate China’s transcultural communication theory in the era of “neo-globalization.” Accordingly, the term “transculturalism” is not only well-noticed but also frequently used in China’s international and intercultural communication studies. To re-examine its different translation versions in Chinese language, namely “跨文化” (kua wenhua) “超越文化” (chaoyue wenhua) and “转文化” (zhuan wenhua), however, researchers may find various connotations rooted in the same concept.

For instance, in their research papers “From ‘intercultural communication’ to ‘transcultural communication’” (Shi, 2018), “From ‘inter-’ to ‘trans-’: reflections on the theoretical and methodological reformation in China’s communication studies in the neo-globalization era” (Shi & Sheng, 2020) and the alike, the authors translated “transcultural communication” into “转文化传播” (zhuan wenhua chuanbo), highlighting the incoming of a new form of communication ecology where the cultural hybridity among heterogeneous cultures or a “Third Culture” seized power in the global media and cultural settings. They argued thereafter that the concept of “interculturalism” fails to articulate the global cultural communication in today’s context. In the article “Understanding the ‘transcultural’ in transcultural political economy of communication research” (Zhao, 2019), the term “transcultural” in “transcultural political economy of communication” is translated into “跨文化” (kua wenhua). The author pointed as well that the Chinese term on the one hand conveyed well the essential meaning of culture in China, namely hybridity and generativity, on the other hand accorded with the concept of “超越文化” (chaoyue wenhua, meaning “culture that goes beyond”) in transcultural communication studies raised and defined by the Chinese communication scholar Shan Bo (Shan, 2010), referring to some cultural forms that went beyond and transcended from cultural fragmentations to public cultural space.

How could this scholarly concept be translated so differently? What kind of academic and theoretical concern can be conveyed throughout their conceptual analyses? Could any commonalities be found out among these differentiated discursive practices? This paper aims not to offer a deterministic definition or translation, but to adopt a genealogical approach, in a Foucauldian sense, to analyze how certain concept or knowledge is created, developed and evolved in specific social and cultural settings. Accordingly, we initiated the clarifying project of discourses and concepts in historical context. On the other hand, it argues that a set of discourse and concept clusters concerning “transculturalism” do articulate, influence and coexist mutually, thus reflecting the interweaving and dynamic scholarly dialogue between various academic traditions and theoretical concerns where the full meaning of “transculturalism” should be uncovered within. In this sense, the paper discusses three theoretical settings of “transculturalism”: a critical discourse towards Post-colonialism, a critical discourse towards the classical approaches in cultural studies, and a critical discourse towards the identity theory which holds a binary theoretical stance. By and large, it aims to fully interpret the connotations of “transculturalism” by analyzing the term’s origin in Western academic circles as the starting point.

2 Transculturalism as a Critical Discourse Towards Post-colonialism

To fully understand the concept of “transculturalism,” we should first uncover the closely-related term “transculturation.”

The term “transculturation” was proposed at first by Fernando Ortiz (1889–1969), a renowned sociologist in Cuba in his Spanish work Contrapunteo Cubano del tabaca y el azúcar published in 1940. In this book, Ortiz examined the history of how Cuba’s tobacco secured global success and how European sugar exerted profound impact on Cuba. In 1947, its English version Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar got published in the United States, bringing the concept into English academics.

In the second section—entitled “The Social phenomenon of ‘transculturation’ and its importance”—of the book, Ortiz pointed out that the process of cultural transmutation was of such complexity and diversity that neither the then widely-accepted term “acculturation” nor “deculturation” was sufficient to describe how the progress underwent. Therefore, he firstly introduced the concept of “transculturation” and another neighboring term “neoculturation”:

I am of the opinion that the word transculturation better express the different phase of the process of transition from one culture to another because this does not consist merely in acquiring another culture, which is what the English word acculturation really implies, but the process also necessarily involves the loss or uprooting of a previous culture, which could be called neoculturation (Ortiz, 1947, pp. 15–16).

Based on his narratives, we could plot a social schema for understanding cultural transmutation. The processes of deculturation, acculturation and neoculturation evolve simultaneously in cultural interaction, echoing the historical trajectory and social reality of development in Cuba and other Latin American countries.

In Ortiz’s opinion, Cuba’s history represents a “history of intermeshed transculturations” (Ortiz, 1947, p. 162). Immigrants to Cuba are all “torn from his native moorings, faced with the problem of disadjustment and readjustment, of deculturation and acculturation—in a word, of transculturation” (Ortiz, 1947, p. 335).

To examine more carefully those phenomena, Ortiz further argued that:

……every transculturation, is a process in which something is always given in return for what one receives, a system of give and take. It is a process in which both parts of the equation are modified, a process from which a new reality emerges, transformed and complex, a reality that is not a mechanical agglomeration of traits, nor even a mosaic, but a new phenomenon, original and independent (Ortiz, 1947, p. 15).

The selection of the word “transculturation” clearly demonstrates Ortiz’s advocation for cultural equality. The Latin origin of the word referred to exact cultural exchanges, where both of the cultural bodies were active and promotive, devoting to certain novel civilizations. “This concept of transculturation coined by Ortiz opens for us, in any event, valuable perspectives on the matter of transcultural exchange under conditions of unequal power relationships” (Hermann, 2007, p. 258).

Evidently, Ortiz showcased here his strong anti-Eurocentrism stance. He argued that “transculturation” should be regarded as a substitute for the then widely-spreading term acculturation, which means that one culture is nurtured by and assimilated into another, unavoidably representing some sense of cultural superiority. The truth is, however, that the immigrants not only adapt themselves and assimilate into new culture, but also retain some parts of their original culture intentionally or unintentionally, combining two cultures at the same time.

At this stage, some core connotations of “transculturation” seem clear. It basically refers to the balanced dialogue, interaction and integration among various cultures, which help to upgrade the original culture and generate new cultural forms. Given this situation, translate “transculturation” into “文化泯化” (wenhua minhua) is viable. Here “泯化” (minhua) in Chinese means convergence. For instance, Kang Youwei, a renowned Chinese intellectual in the late Qing Dynasty era once argued: “泯中西之界，化新旧之门户” (min zhongxizhijie, hua xinjiuzhimenhu, meaning “to converge the Chinese and the Western cultural boundaries, and to remove the new and the old cultural disparities”). Accordingly, the proper Chinese translation to “transculturalism” could be “文化泯化主义” (wenhua minhua zhuyi).

Ortiz’s standpoint of anti-Eurocentrism was heavily influenced by his life experience and personality. He was born in Cuba in 1881 to a Spanish father and a Cuban mother. His full recognition towards the American continents has been cultivated since he was in his cradle. Such personality had a pivotal impact on his research career later on. In other words, Ortiz’s academic path well expressed the recognition of nationalism and a sense of justice like any typical intellectuals in the American continents.

His theory of “transculturation” was built upon his in-depth empirical research. For example, in Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar, Ortiz carefully researched how the tobacco culture converged other cultural norms and how the cane sugar culture emerged into the Cuban culture, which illustrate the concept of “transculturation” in his view. Ortiz argued that Cuba retained two parallel production models, i.e. a colonial mechanical production system represented by the sugar industry, and a native production model represented by the tobacco industry. The encounter of these two production models was not a simple transfer from one culture to another, but a gradual evolvement into “a new syncretism of cultures” (Ortiz, 1947, p. 19), making Cuba the world-leading country in sugar production with the greatest quantity and tobacco of the finest quality.

In addition, Ortiz expressed such a great interest for the local tobacco industry that he paid more scholarly attention to its cultural transmutation. At first, tobacco was well-accepted by the American Anglo-Saxons given its medical effects and sensory stimulation. However, since people figured out its new economic usage in increasing the government’s tax revenue, the tobacco was soon localized in the Western world, forming a capitalized tobacco industry culture, which Ortiz argued represented a typical case of “transculturation.”

Subsequently, the capitalized tobacco industry culture dominated globally. Although tobacco has been heavily criticized due to its health hazard for a long time, the tobacco industry still grew rapidly out of economic interests driven by the prevailing global Capitalism and hedonism supremacy in the West. By the middle of the 16th century, tobacco had become a global commodity transplanted mostly in Europe and resulting in a “universal transculturation” (Ortiz, 1947, p. 375).

Ortiz exhibited concerns about the “universal transculturation.” He argued that the factory machines and financial capitalism could slowly reduce the differences between the tobacco and the sugar culture and de-humanize both cultural forms, which caused his great concerns and discomfort.

3 Transculturalism as a Critical Discourse Towards the Classical Approaches in Cultural Studies

Another term related to “transculturalism” is “transculturality.”

In the 1990s, the concept of “transculurality” was proposed by German philosopher and aesthetician Wolfgang Welsch. In his article “Transculturality—the Puzzling Form of Cultures Today” (Welsch, 1999), Welsch gave his critique against the traditional cultural studies models, along with the theories of interculturality and multiculturality.

First, he argued that the concept of single cultures proposed by Johann Gottfried Herder since the end of the 18th century was outdated, because it tried to separate and distinguish one culture from another. Second, he proposed that the concept of “interculturality” regarded culture as monolithic and still, which failed to settle cultural conflict. Third, he deemed that although the concept of “multiculturality” called for a society in which multicultural groups coexist, it still stressed the cultural separation among them, thus sustaining a singular and homogeneous cultural structure.

In contrast, Welsch argued that the concept of “transculturality” featured the complex interrelationships between different cultures, which has become a trending topic in today’s context. He put it this way:

The old homogenizing and separatist idea of cultures has furthermore been surpassed through cultures’ external networking. Cultures today are extremely interconnected and entangled with each other. Lifestyles no longer end at the borders of national cultures, but go beyond these, are found in the same way in other cultures. The way of life for an economist, an academic or a journalist is no longer German or French, but rather European or global in tone. The new forms of entanglement are a consequence of migratory processes, as well as of worldwide material and immaterial communications systems and economic interdependencies and dependencies. It is here, of course, that questions of power come in (Welsch, 1999, p. 198).

The concept of “transculturality” was raised in its response to some social phenomena in the Western society in the 1990s such as immigration. Although the “transculturality” in Welsch’s sense emphasized decentralization and demarginalization, he still believed that a person with “transculturality” status would not lose his original cultural habits, but combine the two cultures and transcend the binary logic in understanding various cultures.

Welsch’s concept of “transculturality” emphasized the inclusiveness, integration, and the transcendence potentials of cultures. Therefore, it could be better translated into “超文化性” (chao wenhua xing), and “transculturalism” into “超文化主义” (chao wenhua zhuyi), which implied the meaning of “to go beyond” or “to transcend.”

What’s more, in Welsch’s view, the concept of “transculturality” embodied an open mind by emphasizing cultural differences, inclusiveness and connectivity, and highlighting the cultural potentials in adapting themselves into the substantial world trends to sustain their social legitimacy. He further expressed that in the globalization context, “understanding may be helpful, but it never is sufficient alone, it has to enhance progresses in interaction” (Welsch, 1999, p. 203). Only in this way could the Western culture keep its diversity and self-evolution core.

Welsch’s idea of “transculturality” was deeply influenced by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, who was appraised by Welsch as the “precursor of modern transculturality” (Welsch, 1999, p. 202) in that his keen insight into the fact that Western cultures in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were enriched by mutual integration and his critique of “nationalism”, “fatherlandishness” or “addiction to territorial sovereignty” (Welsch, 1999, p. 202) as variants of cultural regression.

At the same time, Welsch’s “cultural evolution theory” was highly influenced by Charles Darwin’s thought of biology evolution. In his co-edited book Interdisciplinary Anthropology: Continuing Evolution of Man, Welsch focused on how human beings succeed in continuous evolution and how powerful human beings own in their evolution trajectory (Welsch et al., 2011). Closely related to human evolution in a larger scale, suffice it to say that Welsch’s concept of “transculturality” has been seen as an approach to the evolution and development for the Western culture, bringing the Western-dominated liberalistic culture to a new height.

Welsch’s concept of “transculturality” implied cultural competition and ethnocentrism, thus far away from our understanding of cultural inclusiveness in the context of “a community with a shared future for mankind.” In the latter narratives, harmonious coexistence, rather than cultural rivalries sets up the foundation for mankind to develop and sustain.

Although Welsch’s theory of “transculturality” emphasized cultural inclusiveness (rather than cultural exclusiveness), mutual respect for cultural differences, and cultural innovation potentials, it still caused critiques. Scholars denounced that it failed to deal with the questions of power distributions and hierarchy formations, ignored the unequal development in the global sense and treated the center and the periphery with no difference, which was too optimistic academically to eliminate the inequality substantially. As another German scholar Wolfgang Berg argued, “The terminology he (Welsch) proposed did not really solve the problem either. Boxes or containers (the boundaries) still exist,” although they are various, more open-minded and inter-connected (Berg, 2011, p. 7).

4 Transculturalism as a Critical Discourse Towards Binary Opposition Identity Theory

To better grasp the concept of “transculturalism,” some other closely connected terms including “transculturality,” “transcultural people,” and “transcultural personalities” should be understood as well.

Wolfgang Berg believed that it is imperative to deconstruct the traditional binary opposition ideas of identity. In his co-edited book Exploring Transculturalism：A Biographical Approach, Berg argued that people could be generally categorized into two types: those with whom we identified and those with whom we did not. Such binary thinking patterns, which labelled ourselves as members of certain national, ethnic, racial, gendered, etc. groups, would lead to possible misunderstanding of cultural coexistence. Furthermore, Berg pointed out that Michel Foucault long before foresaw the advent of the epoch of space in the twentieth century, which means that in the postmodern world, it is the different spaces through which one travels rather than the cultural and national values and history one has inherited that construct one’s identity. Berg held the belief that binary opposition is not suitable in the context of globalization featured by human liberation and cultural hybridity, and should be replaced by postmodern identity theory, which is more flexible and reflective in essence.

Wolfgang Berg’s identity theory highly emphasized the equality in cultural aspects, especially the mutual respect and acceptance of cultural differences, since “each rule” (meanings, values, views, habits, etc.) and “each tool” (symbols, products, etc.) was of particular value. In his words:

Transculturalism, to extend the ideas of Williams and Welsch, not only reflects the fact that “cultures” involve exchange among others or are – as far as national cultures are concerned - heterogenous, but to make clear that each rule and each tool, every particular cultural item might have a particular range of use and importance (Berg & Éigeartaigh, 2010, p. 148).

As a scholar in transcultural communication, Wolfgang Berg focused on transcultural people, their transculturality and transcultural personalities. In Exploring Transculturalism：A Biographical Approach, Berg and other scholars selected particular transcultural people as research targets, including Middle Eastern Swedes, Romanian Americans, Dominican American writers and so on. Research revealed that such transcultural people maintain their original cultural features while accepting heterogeneous ones of their own willingness, thus forging new, hybrid cultural identities. He wrote that:

Our protagonists can all be defined as transcultural personalities because of their willingness to rise to the challenge of living in unfamiliar, sometimes even hostile, societies, and forge new, hybrid narratives of identity for themselves, without compromising their own individuality and cultural heritage (Berg & Éigeartaigh, 2010, p. 16).

By and large, to translate “transculturalism” into “跨文化主义” (kua wenhua zhuyi) in this context is appropriate and enlightening. Berg’s “transculturalism” broke up traditional binary oppositions, constructed “in-between” identities as well as manifested the multiple cultural affiliation and cosmopolitanism perspectives of transcultural people.

5 Conclusion

Scholarly concepts provide the basis for comprehending and grasping social reality, and for academic discussions and theoretical construction. This paper analyzes the scholarly concept of “transculturalism” from a genealogical perspective, arguing that it not only represents the intertwined dialogue of social settings and academic trends, but reflects the interaction of different scholarly concepts and theoretical paths. In this sense, if the translation of “transculturalism” is to be considered as the Chinese localization of a global concept, deeper insights into its knowledge structure and value orientation are in further need.

Concerning the translation of “transculturalism,” given that different academic contexts it involves, this paper concludes that its translation should be divided into three types: in the conceptional context related to “文化濡化” (wenhua ruhua) and “文化萎化” (wenhua weihua), “transculturalism” can be translated into “文化泯化主义” (wenhua minhua zhuyi), while in the context of “跨文化主义” (kua wenhua zhuyi) and “多元文化主义” (duoyuan wenhua zhuyi), “transculturalism” contains the meaning of “超文化” (chao wenhua), thus it is more suitable to be translated into “超文化主义” (chao wenhua zhuyi). In transcultural identity discursive system, “跨文化主义” (kua wenhua zhuyi) is a more appropriate translation.

Moreover, three different translation versions that correspond to three different theoretical approaches are elaborated. These three approaches, each with its own social settings, competing concepts, academic traditions and core ideas, constantly interweave with each other. The paper clarifies the differences and commonalities of three theoretical paths from different perspectives (see Table 1). They mainly differ in research background and paths. The research by Ortiz was related to the anti-colonialism discourse, which intended to deconstruct the academic conceptions with its implication under severe colonialism that were commonly used, such as acculturation (文化濡化, wenhua ruhua) and deculturation (文化萎化, wenhua weihua). Ortiz criticized Eurocentrism, negated the mainstream narrative by colonists and called for cultural equality, thus opening up a new phase of cultural studies.

The study of Welsch was related to the critical discourse towards the classical modes of Western culturalism, focusing on deconstructing the classical culture theory that treated culture as singular and homogeneous, including the concept of “interculturalism” (跨文化主义, kua wenhua zhuyi) which intended to regard each culture as a still island and another concept of “multiculturalism” (多元文化主义, duoyuan wenhua zhuyi) which seemed on the surface to advocate the coexistence between multicultural groups but indeed stressed the isolation de facto. Welsch hoped to construct a new cultural theory in the era of globalization and an international space that transcended national and ethnic boundaries.

Following Welch’s research, Berg attempted to deconstruct dichotomous identity patterns, forming new cultural hybridity identity theory. Be it Ortiz, Welch or Berg, they all recognize cultural commonality and cultural relevance, highlight respect for cultural differences as well as importance of cultural interconnectivity, and foresee the new future brought by cultural integration.

All in all, the paper emphasizes the cultural equality, cultural respect and cultural interconnectivity and other positive meanings embodied in the concept of “transculturalism.” Nevertheless, we should not neglect the essence of culture competition and Western-centralism behind the concept of “超文化主义” (chao wenhua zhuyi).