{"id":86,"date":"2017-12-04T16:16:00","date_gmt":"2017-12-04T21:16:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2018-10-26T11:00:46","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T15:00:46","slug":"ata-58-session-summary-j-3-j-4-translating-sex-and-gender-part-i-henry-james-part-ii-the-tale-of-genji","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/JLD\/2017\/12\/04\/ata-58-session-summary-j-3-j-4-translating-sex-and-gender-part-i-henry-james-part-ii-the-tale-of-genji\/","title":{"rendered":"ATA 58 Session Summary – J-3, J-4: Translating Sex and Gender: Part I, Henry James; Part II, The Tale of Genji"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u201cQueering Translation\u201d \u2013 Translating Sex and Gender: Part I, Henry James (J-3)<\/span><\/div>\n
Date: Friday 10\/27\/17<\/span><\/div>\n
Presenter: J. Keith Vincent<\/span><\/div>\n
Summary by: Sarah Alys Lindholm<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
Professor J. Keith Vincent, chair of the World Languages and Literatures Department at Boston<\/span><\/div>\n
University, was a distinguished guest speaker invited to ATA58 by the Japanese Language Division. He<\/span><\/div>\n
presented a two-part series of sessions on sex and gender in literature which drew attendees from both<\/span><\/div>\n
inside and outside of the JLD.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
In this first session, he began by giving us his personal background, as well as background on the<\/span><\/div>\n
theoretical frameworks he would be using to analyze the literature of Henry James and Murasaki<\/span><\/div>\n
Shikibu.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
Two significant things happened while Professor Vincent was a graduate student at Columbia at age 23:<\/span><\/div>\n
he began reading the Tale of Genji in Classical Japanese, and he came out as gay. This was in the 1990s,<\/span><\/div>\n
so he started reading queer theory at the height of the world\u2019s fear of AIDS as the \u201cgay disease.\u201d Today,<\/span><\/div>\n
he teaches both Japanese literature and sexuality studies at Boston University. His approach to analyzing<\/span><\/div>\n
works like Genji and their translations is grounded in a hybrid of two theoretical frameworks: \u201cLGBTQ<\/span><\/div>\n
Studies\u201d and \u201cQueer Theory.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
LGBTQ Studies vs. Queer Theory<\/span><\/div>\n
LGBTQ Studies (originally known as \u201cLesbian and Gay Studies\u201d), is the older of the two frameworks. It\u2019s<\/span><\/div>\n
referred to as \u201cminoritizing\u201d in the sense that it was thought of as a field for minorities which only<\/span><\/div>\n
applied to minorities. By contrast, Queer Theory is \u201cuniversalizing\u201d: a way of understanding literature<\/span><\/div>\n
and culture that is relevant to everyone regardless of their individual sexual orientations.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
LGBTQ Studies began in the 1970s-80s by asking questions that no one in the mainstream had been<\/span><\/div>\n
asking: What is the construct of gay identity? Who built \u201cthe closet,\u201d and who is it really for? In this<\/span><\/div>\n
framework where we work to define and illuminate the nature of identity, translation is a tool to that<\/span><\/div>\n
end. New translations offer the hope of understanding and restoring gay identities historically left out of<\/span><\/div>\n
literary canons; older English translations of foreign-language works might alter homoerotic passages, or<\/span><\/div>\n
even omit them altogether, and modern translations of these works can render what has been erased<\/span><\/div>\n
visible once more.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
Meanwhile, Prof. Vincent tells us, the Queer Theory framework regards translation as an impossible<\/span><\/div>\n
task: \u201cThe impossibility of translation is a metaphor for the impossibility of a stable identity.\u201d Pursuing<\/span><\/div>\n
this task, however, can revitalize a static source text. As an ongoing and uncertain practice, translation is<\/span><\/div>\n
an inherently \u201cqueer\u201d practice. Queer Theory focuses as much on not retroactively or inappropriately<\/span><\/div>\n
assigning identities as it does on bringing erased identities to light.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
Problems of Translation<\/span><\/div>\n
We have already discussed older translations\u2019 tendency to obscure LGBT Q identities. Another concern<\/span><\/div>\n
when translating queer texts is the issue of warping and distorting the text by translating a neutral word<\/span><\/div>\n
in a pejorative way, or vice versa (for example, the Japanese translation of Leo Bersani\u2019s book Homos<\/span><\/div>\n
omits the pejorative \u201chomo\u201d from the title, while \u201copenly gay\u201d is rendered as \u201cshamelessly gay\u201d within<\/span><\/div>\n
the body of text).<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
Combining Two Theories<\/span><\/div>\n
Professor Vincent prefers to combine elements of both LGBTQ Studies and Queer Theory. As LGBTQ<\/span><\/div>\n
Studies emphasized, it\u2019s important to specifically uncover the aspects of gender and sexual identity that<\/span><\/div>\n
have been overlooked or obscured in the past. But in the Queer Theory model, gay identities shouldn\u2019t<\/span><\/div>\n
be coopted and applied to identities that were inexplicit in the source text. Avoiding this requires a more<\/span><\/div>\n
nuanced and interrogative approach. This type of framework advances both translation and literary<\/span><\/div>\n
theory. In Prof. Vincent\u2019s opinion, \u201ctranslating can make you a better queer theorist, and reading queer<\/span><\/div>\n
theory can make you a better translator.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
Case Study: Henry James\u2019s The Beast in the Jungle<\/span><\/div>\n
This session concluded with a case example analyzing Henry James\u2019s The Beast in the Jungle. Henry<\/span><\/div>\n
James\u2019s writing is \u201cnotoriously vague,\u201d and therefore susceptible to multiple interpretations. What did<\/span><\/div>\n
the character May mean when she used words like \u201cqueerness\u201d and \u201cgaiety\u201d in connection with<\/span><\/div>\n
Marcher, since those words had different popular meanings when this novella came out in 1903 than<\/span><\/div>\n
they do now?<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
At the time, critics\u2019 reading of the text was that Marcher \u201cfailed to marry\u201d May. The LGBTQ Studies<\/span><\/div>\n
reading, on the other hand, is that James\u2019s vagueness is hiding his sexuality. In this reading, Marcher is<\/span><\/div>\n
gay and May is his beard or his fag hag. Eve Sedgwick\u2019s later reading of it through a Queer Theory lens<\/span><\/div>\n
pegged the text as about men who worried that their sexuality was \u201cnot straight enough\u201d\u2014but she did<\/span><\/div>\n
not necessarily assume that Marcher was gay. Professor Vincent invited attendees to look at Japanese<\/span><\/div>\n
translations of relevant passages and to evaluate them with these competing theories in mind.<\/span><\/div>\n
References<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
Bersani, Leo. Homos. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ. Press, 1995.<\/span><\/div>\n
Butler, Judith P. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.<\/span><\/div>\n
Crimp, Douglas, and Leo Bersani. AIDS: Cultural Analysis, Cultural Activism. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press,<\/span><\/div>\n
1987. <\/span>**This was Prof. Vincent\u2019s first reading in the field.<\/span><\/div>\n
Sedgwick, Eve K. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York, N.Y: Columbia<\/span><\/div>\n
University Press, 1985.<\/span><\/div>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

Sedgwick, Eve K. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cQueering Translation\u201d \u2013 Translating Sex and Gender: Part I, Henry James (J-3) Date: Friday 10\/27\/17 Presenter: J. Keith Vincent Summary by: Sarah Alys Lindholm Professor J. Keith Vincent, chair of the World Languages and Literatures Department at Boston University, was a distinguished guest speaker invited to ATA58 by the Japanese Language Division. He presented a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/JLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/JLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/JLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/JLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/JLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/JLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/JLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions\/192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/JLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/JLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/JLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}