Nonsynchronic transpatiality: challenging established narratives of modernity

Ma’s Transpatial Modernity distinguishes itself by offering a transpatial understanding of how modern Chinese writers and thinkers received Russian literary and cultural ideas through the mediator of Japanese scholarship. She proposes her theoretical framework on the basis of Michel Foucault’s discussion about the epoch of space, Ernst Bloch’s idea of nonsynchronism, Homi K. Bhabha’s third space model, and Pascale Casanova’s center-periphery paradigm. Actually, the transpatial nature of modernity precludes its study as a unified, integral, or static entity, as its development in any given location is continually shaped by “interventions and interruptions from other places and times” (p. 21).

Previous works such as Theodore Huters’s Taking China to the World (Huters Reference Huters2022), Peter Zarrow’s Creating Chinese Modernity (Zarrow Reference Zarrow2006), and Xudong Zhang’s Chinese Modernism in the Era of Reforms (Zhang Reference Zhang1997) investigated Chinese modernity around an East-West dichotomy, overshadowing the mediating role of a third culture, like Japan. These prior works largely operated on the premise of a clear-cut hierarchy of cultures, reinforcing dichotomies between East and West, traditional and modern, weak and strong.

By contrast, Ma builds upon prior scholarship by exploring the intricate interplay among multiple actors – Russia, a peripheral yet ascendant force in the West; China, a waning imperial power in the East; and Japan, a rising Asian nation asserting its place among Western powers. It provides a new perspective on the formation of Chinese modernity, emphasizing its transcultural triangulation with the literary worlds of Russia and Japan. The book delves into the Chinese version of modernity against a Western-oriented construction, or even a balanced fusion of Eastern and Western cultures. Fractured and disjointed outcomes of transcultural negotiation may possess their own intrinsic value, offering insights into the complexities and creative potentials of cultural entanglement.

Did Russia provide China with the possibility of an alternative modernity? The author does not simply answer Yes or No, but emphasizes transformability and hybridization. Just as the conceptual dominance of Euro-modernity tends to compel other cultures to conform to Western European paradigms, there is a similar danger in oversimplifying Russia’s role in China’s modernization by merely replacing one form of centrism with another. Given Russia’s complex entanglement with Western Europe, its modernity cannot be easily isolated as a wholly distinct or autonomous formation. Therefore, Ma adopts a decentralized and flexible approach to examining Chinese modernity, one that resists fixed hierarchies and allows for multiple cultural influences to intersect and interact.

In terms of academic and intellectual contributions, Ma’s Transpatial Modernity underscores the work of scholars such as Kai-Wing Chow and Arianna Dagnino, who have examined modernity in a multimodal and transcultural way. Ma extends these discussions by foregrounding the concepts of “transmodernity” or “global modernity,” highlighting the dialectical interconnections and even interdependence among diverse cultural elements as they circulated globally and converged in China.

Relay transculturation: challenging traditional transcultural studies

Relay transculturation is a significant analytical model in the book to deal with Russo-Japanese-Sino triangulation as a pivotal instance of transpatial modernity. It contributes to the theorization of transpatial modernity – a modernity neither strictly local nor global, but constituted by inter-regional linkages that shift the focus away from dominant Eurocentric narratives. Building on and complicating Lydia H. Liu’s host-guest paradigm, this concept challenges the linear, bilateral assumptions of traditional transcultural studies, which have typically focused on direct exchanges between Culture A and Culture B. However, the model of relay transculturation reconceptualizes cultural exchange not as a dyadic interaction between two fixed entities (a “host” and a “guest”), but as a triangular or multilateral process involving at least three cultural actors, one of which functions primarily as an intermediary or cultural broker. In this model, the intermediary culture (such as Japan in the Russo-Japanese-Chinese triad) does not passively transmit foreign influences but rather actively reshapes, filters, and repackages them, thus playing a crucial role in the production and transformation of meaning.

Relay translation is a key facet of transcultural research, which Ma explores through four case studies. The book contends that, throughout Asian history, relay translation has served as a crucial vehicle for cultural exchange, facilitating the transmission and reinterpretation of ideas, texts, and practices across diverse linguistic and cultural spheres. For example, in multilingual India, intranational relay translation has been common, with Hindi and Urdu often acting as pivot languages. During Western colonization, European languages such as Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, English, and French also functioned as intermediaries across parts of Asia. As the author points out, all these translation processes involve the potential for relay transculturation.

In addition, Ma uses the cultural broker discourse to investigate the relay transculturation process. Cultural brokers are often typically defined as individuals or agencies that bridge cultures, facilitating cross-cultural interaction and conflict resolution. This role may be assumed by individuals, groups, or institutions, as long as they connect multiple layers of cultural networks. Current study of cultural brokers still largely focuses on negotiations between two cultures – such as high and low, or colonizer and colonized – with the broker actively mediating between them. In contrast, the case of relay transculturation examined in this book positions the cultural broker as a distinct third party.

Japan is the third-party cultural broker that Ma explores through translated literary texts, ideas, and practice, for example, Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter (Chapter 2), Russian nihilism (Chapter 3), Tolstoy’s religious humanism (Chapter 4), and Lu Xun’s “hard translation” (Chapter 5). Japanese translations have been important sources for Chinese readers to learn about Russia since the end of the nineteenth century. The role of Japan as a cultural broker was strengthened by economic entanglement with the Chinese publishing industry, particularly through the joint venture between the Chinese Commercial Press (Shangwu yinshu guan 商務印書館) and the Japanese publisher Kinkodo (金港堂) at the beginning of the twentieth century. Among the four case studies, the fourth, about Lu Xun, is impressive. There have been a lot of discussions on Lu Xun’s hard translation as a total failure, but no one really looks at all the texts, including German sources, the Japanese version, Lu Xun’s Chinese translation, and the Russian original texts. Ma conducts a comparative analysis to elucidate the concept of relay transculturation and contends that Lu Xun’s approach of “hard translation” was a deliberate strategy aimed at language reform and the promotion of vernacularization.

It is worth noting that although Russia, Japan, and China serve as the primary focus of this book, Ma’s investigation of transpatial modernity extends beyond these three regions. In relation to Japan’s role as a cultural broker, its perception of Russia was consistently mediated by the influence of a third culture – initially Holland, and later including England, Germany, and the United States. The involvement of these intermediary cultures also further complicates the dynamics of Russo-Japanese-Sino relay transculturation. As such, the trajectory of transpatial modernity that Ma maps out in the book ultimately emerges as a genuinely global phenomenon.

However, one modest limitation of Transpatial Modernity lies in its regional and linguistic boundaries. While the book presents a compelling model of relay transculturation within the Russo-Japanese-Chinese triangle, it tends to focus on elite intellectual networks and canonical texts, leaving less space for popular or subaltern voices. The emphasis on mediated cultural flows between national literatures and intellectual traditions, though theoretically sophisticated, may underrepresent nontextual, everyday, or grassroots modes of transcultural engagement. In addition, while the book’s concentration on East Asia is intentional, further comparative work would be necessary to assess the broader applicability of its framework beyond this specific historical and geographic context.