Cultural Translations

cent seminar about Herder’s Folkslied in Sweden shows. At the seminar, a Swedish researcherappreciated his writing on Folkslied, saying that, by focusing on the tradition of folksong, Herder’stext helped making the suppressed class of ordinary people (Folk) visible. 8The term culture is today ‘naturalized’ and used in everyday discourse, Masuzawa points out. 9But it has been endowed with a special significance in the formation of the knowledge of modernity,and it is “one of the most important reality-constituting terms” (Miyasawa 70) Wheneverit is used, she continues, the term tends to be value charged and ‘overtly argumentative’ (71)Europe defining itself as modern since the 18 th century, constructed the other as a mirroring antipode.Hence dichotomies like modernity/tradition, civilized/primitive and own/the other cameto constitute the core of the ideology of modernity. These terms cannot liberate themselves fromimperialist and colonial heritage as shown in postcolonial and cultural studies. 10The reason of the upswing of the term transculturality is, argues Epstein, the crisis of theconcept of “multiculturalism” 11 Multiculturalism stems from U.S. concern on migration and hasspread rapidly to other countries. It expanded to the study of marginalized groups and raised thequestion of the content of education, canonization and marginalization in history and culturalpractice. A dictionary account reads,As a descriptive term, multiculturalism refers to the coexistence of people with many culturalidentities in a common state, society, or community. As a prescriptive term, it is associated withthe belief that racial, ethnic, and other groups should maintain their distinctive cultures withinsociety yet live together with mutual tolerance and respect. 12Culture is, here, regarded as identity marker for a certain group of ‘racial, ethnic, and othergroups’. The origin of the term multicultural and how it has been used as instrumental in politicaland cultural discourses make the term value laden and polemical. It has ensued the notions ofassimilation, rejection and exclusion, and also hybridity. Hybridity in this context implies powerrelationship of dominant and dominated cultures, and is value laden: hybridity is contrastedagainst authenticity and that which is legitimate. Multiculturalism can urge for ‘understanding’of the other. However, power relationship imbedded in the notion of the other has an abusive effecton performing a really egalitarian act of understanding. Multicultural view has been confrontational,and in real politics, the root of many serious conflicts in the world. For this reason, theintroduction of the term transculturality seems necessary to give a name to an egalitarian viewof culture, and to interpret actual cultural performance today.Why transculturality?Before discussing transculturality and subject position, I would like to make just a short remarkabout the term. As Welsch and Appadurai, too, pointed out, the phenomena of transferor move of people and cultural artifacts or ideas is by no means exclusively contemporary phe-48 See note 5.9 Masuzawa, Tomoko. 1998. “Culture” in Critical Terms for Religious Studies. Ed. by Taylor, Mark C. Chicago& London: University of Chicago Press.10 See Masuzawa 1998, 78. The article gives a useful survey of the genealogy of the term culture.11 Epstein, Mikhail. “Transculture”. http://glossary.isud.org/2007/11/tranculture.htlm (2010-07-11).12 Quotation from the account under “multiculturality” in Dictionary of the Social Sciences, 2002, ed. byCraig Calhoun, Oxford University Press.Noriko Takei-Thunman