anyways i've been spending so much time in the library because i feel like i have so many assignments, but everything feels so dusty and irrelevant and unimportant.. which has actually been helpful in prompting me to do the work i need to do without agonizing over it. the only class i care about anymore is my translation workshop and my lan yu translation project.. i haven't really made much more progress on it yet but i've been enjoying doing the readings for our discussions each week. i realized that translation satisfies a part of me that is very fixated on details (mercury virgo lol) and also my tendency to fall into an obsessive dedication to whatever object/figure/historical period i'm interested in.. because of that, i find reading all these scathing translation reviews to be so funny and enjoyable. all of these critics are so petty, but (if done right) they always come from a place of love (here are a few that i've read: x, x, x). and i've been thinking a lot about what gayatri spivak wrote in her essay, "the politics of translation":
"First, then, the translator must surrender to the text. she must solicit the text to show the limits of its language, because that rhetorical aspect will point at the silence of the absolute fraying of language that the text wards off, in its special manner. Some think this is just an ethereal way of talking about literature or philosophy. But no amount of tough talk can get around the fact that translation is the most intimate act of reading. Unless the translator has earned the right to become the intimate reader, she cannot surrender to the text, cannot respond to the special call of the text."
i remember being in awe at how people like simon leys (despite his troubling positionality as a white translator) are literally in love with confucius and dedicate their lives to reviving the words of this mysterious, incredible person who may or may not have existed 2000 years ago. isn't that so.. romantic?? i can't help it..
along the lines of translating the words of dead people, i've also been really struck by something i read in a walter benjamin (hero of media theory)'s essay "the task of the translator". benjamin is tough and terribly inscrutable at times, but this part of the essay really resonated with me. he writes:
"Just as the manifestations of life are intimately connected with the phenomenon of life without being of importance to it, a translation issues from the original — not so much from its life as from its afterlife. For a translation comes later than the original, and since the important works of world literature never find their chosen translators at the time of their origin, their translation marks their stage of continued life."
the idea is that certain texts (benjamin cites tang and song dynasty poetry as examples) possess a quality that enable them to be circulated in their "afterlife", and the translator's work adds to and extends the work's afterlife. there's an exchange of agency (?) taking place in these cases since the original writer is often long dead, but the translator must, as spivak said, submit themselves to the text, even as they acquire the responsibility of becoming the sole agent in the act of translation and dissemination.
of course, there's something so validating about this idea and yes.. it involves leslie.. i feel like in so many ways i've "surrendered" to leslie (!), and the way i've been circulating images and materials on leslie is very much a form of extending his afterlife. what a breakthrough! how incredible to finally be able to articulate some kind of meaning onto everything i've been doing!
actually, i also need to give credit to yiman wang's essay "a star is dead: a legend is born: practicing leslie cheung's posthumous fandom" (which was published in 2007.. i want to write a followup so badly bc so much has changed in social media over the past 10 years..):
"Aided by computer technology and new media, Leslie fans engage in proliferating creative star practices at both individual and collective levels. They see themselves as the legitimate agent in spreading and carrying on the Leslie legacy. Borrowing Walter Benjamin's model of ‘prehistory’ and ‘afterlife’ in his analysis of the ruins, we may argue that Cheung's death sealed his life and consigned the time he represented to ‘prehistory’ whose ‘afterlife’ depends upon his fans. For Benjamin, the significance of ruins lies precisely in its wreckage and imminent disappearance [...] Likewise, Cheung's significance as not just an idol, but also what Mo Cheng calls a ‘cultural hero’, can be recognized only after his death and legendization (Mo 2004: 135). That is, his significance surfaces when he becomes a dead celebrity. The death of an authoritative figure can free fans to become authors in their own right, which in turn facilitate ‘afterlife’ and omniscience."
this is really my first foray into dead celebrity scholarship, but nevertheless i find it so compelling to think of everything that i'm doing as a contribution to leslie's afterlife. and the way that people contribute to the circulation of leslie media is a testament to leslie's star quality because there's something so undeniably.. alive about all of these mediated representations of him. even an image of leslie captured in a low quality blurry photograph creates a specific affective response in viewers (or at least in me, but i know there are others who've had the same reactions). like i remember the first time i watched an interview with leslie, and i was struck by how real he was! all of his gestures and mannerisms felt so.. spirited? and alive! so, so alive!
the thought of continuing in this vein of dead celebrity scholarship is really the only thing pushing me to consider graduate school and moving on with academia. and i think it's fitting that the only project i'm interested in pursuing further is one that's not only intensely personal to me and that i'm already tremendously invested in, but also .. oddly specific in an obscure way that doesn't really seem to lend it credence in an academic setting. like i feel like all of academia has to consistently convince itself of its importance and that they are contributing to some greater movement that will create radical change in the world, blah blah.. but i don't feel that way about myself and i'm not buying into this myth. but maybe i could consider grad school as a means for me to pursue my obsession with leslie in an academic context, and let others decide whether or not it's important from there.. maybe? i will muse on it further, although right now i'm very much in a "free me from the clutches of the university" kind of head space, and i change my mind about this literally every two days, and it's okay. it's fine. i can afford to be fine.
hope everyone is well..
xo c
