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Translating the Other: Ghassan Kanafani’s Travelogue ... And Then Arose Asia
Abstract by Mrs. Peiyu Yang On Session   (Translating Difference)

On Tuesday, November 12 at 11:30 am

2024 Annual Meeting

Abstract
Ghassan Kanafani (1936–1972) is perhaps the most important literary figure in Palestinian resistance literature. He was a novelist, a journalist, and the spokesperson for the PLO until his assassination by Mossad in 1972. In 1965 he was invited to attend a ceremony for the sixteenth anniversary of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. He also visited India on this trip and published an account of his travels upon his return to Palestine, which has largely been ignored by previous studies of his work. Kanafani’s ... And Then Arose Asia provides an important case study for exploring how Kanafani envisions a Palestinian–Chinese solidary through his romanticisation of communist China and his admiration toward Mao Zedong, the Chinese communist revolutionary. This chapter provides a close reading of the Chinese section of ... And Then Arose Asia. I conceive this section as a form of cultural translation, rather than a purely linguistic one. I explore why it is important to consider cultural translation when we consider translation as an act of solidarity. In doing so, I will explore what it means that this particular instance of cultural translation, despite being used for solidarity-building, contains vestiges of the very colonial or Orientalist thought against which that solidarity is being built. In particular, I problematise Kanafani’s failure to evade the Orientalist gaze in his discussion of the bodies of Chinese women and his idealisation of Maoism. The chapter explores the complexity of translation’s uses in anti-colonial resistance and solidarity-building between the colonised self and the colonised other.
Discipline
Literature
Geographic Area
Arab States
China
India
Palestine
Sub Area
None