Made in Other Words

WiSER invites you to a seminar by

Jay Schutte

Made in Other Words: Translating the Anglochronotopia in the Sino-African Encounter

Sino-African dialogue continues to escalate on political, economic, and educational fronts, evidenced by the establishment of agreements like FOCAC and BRICS, as well as a considerable increase in Chinese-sponsored educational initiatives in both Africa and China (Brautigam 2009, Bodomo 2012, Chan 2013, Alden 2007, Li et al 2012, King 2013). However, all of these initiatives – despite being overwhelmingly China-driven – continue to be made legible and evaluated within an interconnected landscape of English language-based media, aesthetic, political, ethical, and economic discourse appearing as an all-commensurating landscape of aspiration and cultural capital (Bourdieu 1986, Errington 2008, Cohn 1996, Achebe 1965, Ngugi 1994). Drawing on the theoretical work of Mikhail Bakhtin (1981) and Franz Fanon (1965 and 1967), this discussion draws attention to the mobilization of English and its associated signs of value, race, and aspiration, as a form inter-social, spatiotemporal construction that both constrains and impinges on Sino-African encounters. I call these constructions Anglochronotopias. Through describing their emergence among African and Chinese interlocutors in Beijing – at the very reception-end of ‘Chinese’ soft power – I will reflect the ways in which a number of aspiring Sino-Afropolitans find themselves in a political economy of soft power that produces, at times, frustratingly limiting possibilities of representation.

Thursday, 6th August 2015
1pm

WiSER Seminar Room,
6th Floor, Richard Ward Building,
East Campus, Wits University

Jay Schutte is a South African Cultural and Linguistic Anthropology PhD Candidate at the University of Chicago. His research focus is on the relationship between Semiotics and Social Media in the Africa-China soft power debate, and engages theories of Translation and Semiotic Ideology, Mediation and (An)Aesthetics, as well as Material Histories and ‘Circulation’. He has recently completed his dissertation fieldwork among African students studying in Beijing and has previously lectured and taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, as well as the University of Chicago. He has also served as the University of Chicago African Studies workshop coordinator. As Ford Foundation China New Generation Scholar in China, he undertook two visiting scholar appointments - from Renmin (2012/2013) and Beijing Normal University (2014/15)  respectively.
 
All welcome.