Volume 18, Issue 2

The Zhuangzi is a book that opens to a virtual wilderness of interpretive possibilities begging for exploration by scholars and laypersons alike. What follows here is an adventuresome foray by one of the latter. As such, it is essentially an exercise in creative writing. Since it is our interpretive conclusion that this was precisely what Zhuangzi himself was about, we believe he would smile broadly upon this endeavor however far-afield its proclamations might be. This point is central within this essay. However we engage with Zhuangzi, whether as a dilettante or an academic, it is the engagement that matters most. Conclusions are secondary at best. This having been said, conclusions will be found herein. Ambiguity is the signature characteristic of Zhuangzi’s writing. Awareness of ambiguity as a defining characteristic of the human experience invites us to consider the importance of not-knowing, the thing-left-out, the usefulness of the useless, the prioritization of Yin over Yang, and, most importantly, the experience of inherent emptiness. For Zhuangzi, such an awareness invites a radical paradigm shift away from the cognitive to the visceral. It invites an embrace of emptiness that renders one free of all dependence on being a self in need of itself.

Translation semiotics is a new discipline which emerged in recent years from the two fields of translation and semiotics. Scholars in China, such as Hongwei Jia, have carried out related studies on this new discipline, defining it, positioning its research range, and providing its theoretical frame. Jia innovatively proposed the construction of three retranslation domains applicable to translation semiotics – intrasemiospheric translation, intersemiospheric translation, and suprasemiospheric translation – to broaden the theoretical perspective of translation semiotics. In this paper I present an overview of a comprehensive survey of the literature on translation semiotics in China to reflect the current situation of Chinese academic research in this field. The paper provides an analysis of the survey results revealing the progress of research, summarizes the existing shortcomings and problems, and discusses future development trends in this field in order to provide some ideas and references for further research.

The paper aims to clarify the distinction of intension and concept between translation semiotics and semiosic translation to determine their disciplinary classification as well as the theoretical framework of translation semiotics. Translation semiotics is a relatively young interdisciplinary field connecting specifically semiotics and translation studies. In essence, it is a branch of semiotics where the research object is the semiotic transformations and sign activities involved in the translational semiosic and interpretive process. Semiosic translation attaches itself conceptually to an extended notion of semiosis involving the transformation of any sign system into other sign systems and pertains to the illustration and analysis of translational phenomena from the perspective of semiotics. Translation semiotics focuses on semiotic transformations and constructs a semiotic theory and application model based on the dimension of semiotic transformation. Both translation semiotics and semiosic translation take semiotic transformations as their research object. Notwithstanding, semiosic translation puts particular emphasis on semiosis, whereas translation semiotics explores the phenomena of semiotic transformations and related problems involved in the process of translation grounded on semiotic theories and methodology (Jia 2016a: 96). As such, translation semiotics and semiosic translation are under the jurisdiction of different disciplines.

Charles Sanders Peirce highlights that “the entire world is perfused with signs.” That is, nothing can exist without signs. Ethnology is no exception in this light. Up to now, ethnology has not been exhaustively examined in terms of semiotics, nor has it combined with semiotics effectively and efficiently in China, with its multiple ethnic groups and multi-millenary tradition of knowledge. To promote the further development of ethnology in China in terms of semiotics, as well as the development of Chinese ethnosemiotics at the embryonic stage, I conducted an interview with Prof. Hongwei Jia, a semiotician based at Capital Normal University in Beijing and meanwhile serving as the founding Director of the Center for Semiotics and Cultural Studies at Shinawatra University in Bangkok. This interview focuses on the relationship between ethnology and semiotics, as well as the origin, application, and development of ethnosemiotics in China, in order to inspire further related research and promote the future development of this area.

The translation and study of Virginia Woolf began in the late 1920s out of pure artistic interest, then became stagnant due to the extreme tendencies of the left-wing movement. In the new era, when the literary exchange between the East and the West resumed, the Chinese translation and study of Woolf came to flourish in literary circles with the second wave of Modernism and the rise of feminist criticism. This paper, by combining the historical development with the cultural context, conducts a full-scale inquiry into the features of the Chinese translation and study of Woolf during the period of the Republic of China (1929–1949) and the period of the new age since the reform and opening-up (1978–) and gives a detailed analysis of the spiritual connection between Woolf’s cultural view of feminism and contemporary Chinese feminist writers.

This paper draws on a translated and adapted excerpt from the author’s book, Marguerite Duras: La chambre noire de l’écriture (2021) (original title: 玛格丽特·杜拉斯:写作的暗房) . Starting with Marguerite Duras’s unpublished essay, “Les petits pieds de la Chine,” written around 1950, this paper aims to reveal how childhood memories are generated and transformed into Duras’s typical mode of writing about the self over time, which holds good for understanding and analyzing the five versions of lover(s) that Duras created from the 1940s to the early 1990s. The theme and destination of Duras’s creation is not so much love as writing, which never stops generating “another possibility of returning to the original book.”

Susan Sontag’s discussion and depiction of illness, especially AIDS, in her writings can help us better understand the metaphoric mechanism of illness in the Chinese film Love for Life . As one of the leading metaphors attached to AIDS, plague brings discrimination and prejudice against AIDS patients, whether they are to blame or not. Moreover, due to demonization, AIDS patients suffer from social death even when they are still alive. Love for Life challenges the taboo subject in China and makes an appeal that the body should not be treated as the vehicle of metaphors and that we need to break the illness–health dichotomy so as to shake off the metaphors of illness.

The issue of power politics is a crucial topic in Margaret Atwood’s works. According to Atwood, power is pervasive and diffused throughout all social relations. This essay examines how power becomes a part of human life, and how different levels of power interact in Atwood’s third novel Lady Oracle (1976). I investigate Atwood’s treatment of family upbringing in reinforcing gender roles. I show how Atwood explores the protagonist’s odd behavior in relation to her family environment. I also consider Atwood’s representation of the cultural control of women with prescribed images or roles for them. The small details that form the everyday life of the protagonist are highly gendered and part of a larger picture of a patriarchal society. Based on Foucault’s notion of disciplinary society, I analyze how Atwood examines self-watching as internalized power. The protagonist and girls of her age best represent an internalization of patriarchal values of femininity. Just like the inmates of the Panopticon, they practice discipline through self-surveillance.

The womanist thinking initiated by Alice Walker not only represents her philosophical stance, but also imbues her literary writings with womanist characteristics. The pursuit of “the survival and wholeness of entire people” is the essence of Walker’s womanism, which permeates all of her writings so that her literary production demonstrates a unique artistic style with aesthetic implications. The patched quilt, known as a symbol of the artistic form of Walker’s womanist writings, is featured with the achievements of a whole by means of a fragmented and patched form. It also embodies the thematic structure in Walker’s writings which is presented in a clearly outlined pattern of “fragmented–piecing–wholeness.” By exploring the themes that constitute the thematic pattern in Walker’s writings, this paper points out that the fragmented–piecing–wholeness structure of womanist themes conveys hope for those who are oppressed by sexism and racism and those who are uncertain of their own destiny. Alice Walker has succeeded in combining her ideological content with artistic forms, and her womanist writings have not only enhanced the value of the culture of American blacks, but have also enriched literary ways of expression.