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This paper discusses Qu Qiubai's theoretical ideas about translation from his political and ideological point of view. It tries to understand how the political and historical background of the author had a deep influence on his thinking about translation. Qu Qiubai's writing on translation reveals a spatial and temporal imaginary which tends to see the cultural difference between China and western modernity as historical. Its commentary and critique on China's linguistic heterogeneity in the thirties, articulated with questions of translation, work as a destabilization of the traditional and reassuring distinction between a “source language” and a “target language”. In the end, this paper points out Qu Qiubai's anxiety on the difference of sense created by the process of translation. For the Marxist thinker, this difference could only be erased if the Chinese “target language” was a new and contemporary oral language which didn't keep any traces of an anachronic past.

Questioning translation involves thinking and complexifying the links and the differences between two cultures, two languages, two texts, two words, etc. To what extent are Qu Qiubai's ideas on translation determined by his historical situation and his ideological imaginary ? What are his views, in a temporal perspective, on the cultural differences between his Chinese location and “Western modernity” ? In what regard the way he represents and criticizes China's linguistic heterogeneity in 1930 upsets the reassuring relationship between a “host-language” and a “guest-language” ? Why does he consider translation - as produced by the Chinese writers of his time - as the interference of a contemporary language in languages of the past ? Finally how does Qu Qiubai settle the issue of temporal difference, as he views it, by setting translation within the framework of a Chinese vernacular language which would be becoming, contemporary and free of any trace of the cultural past and of the translator's writing ?, Interroger la traduction, c'est penser et compliquer un rapport et une différence entre deux cultures, deux langues, deux textes, deux mots, etc. En quoi cette pensée de la traduction chez Qu Qiubai est-elle conditionnée par sa situation historique et son imaginaire idéologique ? Comment lit-il dans une perspective temporelle les différences culturelles entre sa position chinoise et une modernité occidentale ? En quoi sa représentation et sa critique l'hétérogénéité linguistique de la Chine en 1930 déstabilise la relation rassurante de la traduction entre une « langue source » et une « langue cible » ? Pourquoi se représente-t-il la traduction pratiquée par les écrivains chinois de l'époque comme l'immixtion d'une langue contemporaine dans des langues du passé ? Comment, enfin, Qu Qiubai résout-il cette différence supposée temporelle en se figurant la traduction dans une langue vernaculaire chinoise en devenir, contemporaine, vierge des traces du passé et de l'écriture du traducteur ?

International audience; In a recent book, published after a series of conferences held in Japan, French philosopher Regis Debray makes a praise of "frontiers"1. His stand is polemical, paradoxical, and challenging in a world more and more influenced both by discourses on globalization and internationalization, as well as by an (inter)national withdrawal to (imagined) national traditions, beliefs, narratives. The polemical intent was effective, and the essay was received with many critics; of course we do not endorse a discourse that defines what is in and what is (or shall be) out; but it surprising how effective and potentially explosive every politically incorrect stand against a world without frontier could still resonate in a consensual intellectual milieu. The interesting point in Debray's essay is a re-evaluation of the borders; of course, not intended as seclusion or a closure, but as a source of (intellectual) pleasure: crossing a border could be an exciting experience, meant to fuel curiosity, to arouse questions and relativize a worldview that could become claustrophobic. The idea is to discuss and give nuance to a category too often given for granted.

International audience; In a recent book, published after a series of conferences held in Japan, French philosopher Regis Debray makes a praise of "frontiers"1. His stand is polemical, paradoxical, and challenging in a world more and more influenced both by discourses on globalization and internationalization, as well as by an (inter)national withdrawal to (imagined) national traditions, beliefs, narratives. The polemical intent was effective, and the essay was received with many critics; of course we do not endorse a discourse that defines what is in and what is (or shall be) out; but it surprising how effective and potentially explosive every politically incorrect stand against a world without frontier could still resonate in a consensual intellectual milieu. The interesting point in Debray's essay is a re-evaluation of the borders; of course, not intended as seclusion or a closure, but as a source of (intellectual) pleasure: crossing a border could be an exciting experience, meant to fuel curiosity, to arouse questions and relativize a worldview that could become claustrophobic. The idea is to discuss and give nuance to a category too often given for granted.

International audience

Qu Qiubai (1899-1935), a Chinese revolutionary thinker of the May Fourth generation, developed a political critique of the Chinese cultural realm which he perceived as internally fragmented. He brought to the fore the cultural and linguistic rift between the Europeanized intellectual elites and the "masses". In the early nineteen thirties, as he reflected upon the coming into being of a common culture which would have to be both modern and popular, he was confronted with theoretical questions such as cultural colonialism, hybridity, and the lack of national identity. The singularity of his position lay in the tension between his marxian universalism and his geo-cultural decenteredness, as well as in a seemingly contradictory critique-cum-accomodation, of a europeanization of which he was himself the product. Qu Qiubai emphasized the idea of popularizing modernity and regarded it as a translation of European culture in the service of Chinese nation-building.; Cet ouvrage se propose de présenter et de discuter les thèses de l'intellectuel révolutionnaire Qu Qiubai (1899-1935), militant et penseur de la modernité culturelle. Ecrits à Shanghai au début des années mil neuf cent trente, les essais analysés ici interrogent des problématiques liées à la culture populaire, à la question d'une langue commune et au phénomène d'« européanisation » de la Chine. Les écrits de Qu Qiubai témoignent du moment singulier où le processus de construction nationale, engagé depuis la fin du XIXe siècle, et confirmé ensuite avec Mao Zedong, n'avait pas encore constitué et uniformisé un espace culturel et linguistique homogène. Qu Qiubai pense le devenir culturel commun d'un sujet collectif, dispersé et hétérogène, dont le futur ne se réduirait pas à un devenir peuple ou nation et qui ne soit pas une uniformisation de type jacobine d'une culture nationale et/ou prolétarienne. Critique de l'idée de langue nationale, il imagine une « langue commune » dans une forme non standardisée, dialogique dans sa relation avec les dialectes locaux et qui intègre la problématique des classes sociales. Pourfendeur de la « Nouvelle culture » chinoise, « bourgeoise » et européanisée, il veut exploiter politiquement et rendre moderne la culture populaire en prenant en compte toute sa diversité. Il lit l'échec politique et social du mouvement communiste chinois (1927-1931) comme la conséquence de l'inachèvement de la révolution culturelle et appelle à la prise du « pouvoir culturel », comme Gramsci, à la même époque en Italie, écrivait sur l'« hégémonie culturelle » en tant que préalable à la prise du pouvoir politique. Dans son approche méthodologique, cette étude vise à mettre en évidence un auteur dont les thèses se sont trouvées minorées par une géopolitique de la connaissance et des disciplines masquant les productions théoriques du « non-Occident ». A la fois produits et critiques d'une modernité qui fut aussi une acculturation pour la Chine, les écrits de Qu Qiubai contestent toute possibilité d'invoquer une tradition intellectuelle « chinoise » et/ou « orientale » considérée dans son extériorité et dans sa différence avec un « Occident ». Si Qu Qiubai est aussi un théoricien chinois, nous le lisons ici d'abord comme un penseur de (dans) la modernité.

This study investigates the discursive peregrinations of the “Han” category in the writings of the Chinese revolutionary, theoretician and activist Qu Qiubai. In the papers he wrote at the beginning of the 1930s dealing with the questions of language and writing, the author made singular use of the concept “Han” to talk about the language/writing of the “Han” (Hanzi, Hanyu) as a racial or ethnic group (Hanzu). Narrating the history of the cultural hegemony of the “Han” in Asia and criticizing the assimilation policy (tonghua), Qu elaborated a discourse which articulated and mobilized, sometimes in a contradictory manner, the “Han” category both as a “race” and as a social class. Going beyond the race/class dialectic, I will try to show that these texts question the territorial, cultural and ethnic boundaries of “China” and its homogeneity. Following this argument, this paper demonstrates how Qu's attempt to define “Chinese language(s)” helps us to elucidate the complex articulation between China as a discursive and spatial category, the “Han” category, and the other nationalities in the Chinese space. By questioning the homogeneity of the linguistic identity of China, using the word zhongguohua, Qu Qiubai unveiled an unstable and fragile imaginary relative to China and

The so-called 'intercultural' approach challenges the academic world's temptation to adopt a universal, metacultural locus of enonciation; it challenges the idea that we can hide our geo-cultural, our historical and even our linguistic positions to speak from a pure, scientific theoretical situation. This tension between a claim for theoretical universalism and the reality of local culturewas very strong in the 1930s among Chinese writers, and especially for a revolutionary intellectual such as Qu Qiubai (1899-1935), convinced by the universal dimension of Marxism in the face of Chinese local history and culture.

This article discusses the contradictory representations of an imaginary China as invented by the French tourist industry discourse : on the one hand the traditional Orientalist representation of a mythic, reified and timeless China, and on the other hand, the increasingly obvious assessment of China as modern and contemporary. The fact that the tourist industry evokes a contemporary, ambitious and active China, tends, however, to deconstruct the Orientalist imaginary of a timeless China which they themselves describe. Tourist industry discourse negotiates this contradiction by insisting on a post-modern dimension. As they adapt their products to new Chinese realities, the travel agents present an “Oriental post-modernity” - a world where an eternal, both contemporary and a-historic, present prevails - instead of a “lost Orient”. They sell the utopian dream of a harmonious world, a seamless modernity which would not have “melted into air” local cultures and traditional practices.; Cette étude discute des représentations contradictoires de la Chine imaginaire telle qu'elle est inventée par le discours touristique français : la représentation orientaliste traditionnelle d'une Chine mythique réifiée et intemporelle d'un côté, et la prise en compte, de plus en plus flagrante, non seulement d'une Chine moderne mais aussi contemporaine de l'autre. L'évocation récurrente par le discours touristique d'une Chine au présent, ambitieuse et agissante, n'est-elle cependant pas susceptible de déconstruire l'imaginaire orientaliste d'une Chine a-historique telle que la présentent les voyagistes ? Nous postulons que le discours touristique négocie cette contradiction par l'insistance qu'il met à donner une dimension postmoderne à la Chine. Adaptant leurs produits aux nouvelles réalités chinoises, les voyagistes substituent un “Orient postmoderne” à l'ancienne représentation d'un “Orient-passé”: la condition chinoise serait celle d'une “postmodernité orientale”, un monde de l'éternel présent, sans histoire mais contemporain. Ils vendent à leur clients l'utopie d'un monde apaisé, une modernité sans rupture qui n'aurait pas bouleversé les pratiques et cultures locales traditionnelles.

International audience; This article discusses the contradictory representations of an imaginary China as invented by the French tourist industry discourse : on the one hand the traditional Orientalist representation of a mythic, reified and timeless China, and on the other hand, the increasingly obvious assessment of China as modern and contemporary. The fact that the tourist industry evokes a contemporary, ambitious and active China, tends, however, to deconstruct the Orientalist imaginary of a timeless China which they themselves describe. Tourist industry discourse negotiates this contradiction by insisting on a post-modern dimension. As they adapt their products to new Chinese realities, the travel agents present an “Oriental post-modernity” - a world where an eternal, both contemporary and a-historic, present prevails - instead of a “lost Orient”. They sell the utopian dream of a harmonious world, a seamless modernity which would not have “melted into air” local cultures and traditional practices.; Cette étude discute des représentations contradictoires de la Chine imaginaire telle qu'elle est inventée par le discours touristique français : la représentation orientaliste traditionnelle d'une Chine mythique réifiée et intemporelle d'un côté, et la prise en compte, de plus en plus flagrante, non seulement d'une Chine moderne mais aussi contemporaine de l'autre. L'évocation récurrente par le discours touristique d'une Chine au présent, ambitieuse et agissante, n'est-elle cependant pas susceptible de déconstruire l'imaginaire orientaliste d'une Chine a-historique telle que la présentent les voyagistes ? Nous postulons que le discours touristique négocie cette contradiction par l'insistance qu'il met à donner une dimension postmoderne à la Chine. Adaptant leurs produits aux nouvelles réalités chinoises, les voyagistes substituent un “Orient postmoderne” à l'ancienne représentation d'un “Orient-passé”: la condition chinoise serait celle d'une “postmodernité orientale”, un monde de l'éternel présent, sans histoire mais contemporain. Ils vendent à leur clients l'utopie d'un monde apaisé, une modernité sans rupture qui n'aurait pas bouleversé les pratiques et cultures locales traditionnelles.

International audience