Jørgensen, S. B., Lüsebrink, H. (2021). Cultural Transfer Reconsidered: Transnational
Perspectives, Translation Processes, Scandinavian and Postcolonial Challenges. Brill Rodopi. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004443693
(pp. 257)
One of the books in the series Approaches to Translation
Studies, Cultural Transfer Reconsidered is fascinating,
enlightening, and presents various aspects of trilateral and multilateral
transfers. It provides new perspectives to examine cultural dynamics of translation
and transfer, which makes publication of this book a timely and great resource
for its intended readers.
Apart from an introduction, this book comprises ten
chapters that are divided into three parts. The introductory section elaborates
on the cultural transfer approach to redefine its research objects and
paradigms, followed by reviewing the three primary cultural transfer research trends
over the past several decades. The book then presents a brief outline of the
cultural transfer paradigm within a Scandinavian context before giving the
contents of the subsequent chapters.
Part 1 (Chapters 1–4), Transnational Processes of Cultural
Mediation, “advocates for a transnational view of cultural and literary
history, providing examples from a European context with a particular attention
to Scandinavian cases” (p. 12). Chapter 1 demonstrates the need to move away
from the paradigm of comparativism, and underlines the importance of cultural
transfer to modify the receiving culture. It then presents cultural transfers
between German, Scandinavian, and Russian spheres during the nineteenth century
to highlight the contributions of cultural transfers to postcolonial studies
and the importance of transfer process dynamics.
Focused on literature, Chapter 2 discusses the problem of
methodological nationalism as it relates to cultural transfers. Using Ibsen’s
reception in Europe in the late nineteenth century as an example, this chapter
criticizes the national paradigm, and unravels the concrete process how
national categories were historicized. By analyzing the agents that facilitated
the spread of Ibsen’s drama, this chapter proposes an agent-driven approach to
cultural transfers. It concludes that it may provide a more precise picture of
how literature moves to abandon methodological nationalism and employs a
network-based concept of literary history.
Chapter 3, pointing to the crisis of the literary historiography,
proposes to study and compile the transnational literary history from the
perspective of cultural transfer studies. This chapter views the notion of
world literature as a highly Western-oriented concept and argues the importance
of cultural transmitters, especially the individual transmitters. In
particular, it presents different categories of cultural transmitters and
concrete phases of transmission. It concludes that a more nuanced understanding
of cultural transmitters is essential to write transnational literary history.
Chapter 4 focuses on art history to discuss the relevance of cultural
transfer notions and hybridity. Using cultural transfer as an analytical tool, it
demonstrates how pictorial modernity spread rapidly across Europe at the end of
the nineteenth century. It then analyzes the processes of how Finnish and
Norwegian women artists travelled to France to practice new painting techniques
and how they made significant contributions to renew their home countries’
painting styles, drawing our attention to a particular kind of cultural
transmitters.
Part 2 (Chapters 5–7), Aspects of Textual Transfers,
primarily focuses on the mobility of literary texts and works from micro
perspectives. Chapter 5 discusses the relationship between the concepts and
critical practices of cultural transfers and intertextuality. It initially
discusses the definitions and methodological interrelationship of
intertextuality, inter-discursivity and inter-subjectivity. It then discusses
the case of Malian novelist Yambo Ouologuem and his work Le Devoir de
violence (Bound to violence, 1968), in which Ouologuem rewrites or
reinterprets several textual references from Europe, Africa, and Arabia. In
conclusion, this chapter argues that “intertextuality in sub-Saharan African
literatures and the creative processes they provoke, are direct consequences of
cultural transfers” (p. 120).
Chapter 6 concentrates on aphorism to show that “genre is an
instrument of intercultural communication that is transformed and subverted in
processes of cultural transfer” (p. 125). It starts with an overview of genre
cultural transfer and illustrates its evolution, requirements, and functions.
Through an analysis of New Caledonian writer Déwé Gorodé’s Par les temps qui
courent aphorisms, this chapter argues that Gorodé’s aphorisms are a result
of a complex cultural transfer which has produced critical effects.
Chapter 7 focuses on transfer and translation processes. Based on
three examples of avant-garde strategies of literature in the 1960s, it
proposes that “strategies of translation as rewriting may pave the way for new
thinking about the complexity of cultural transfer as process” (p. 140). Finally,
it argues that translation and rewriting imply strongly the reader’s position
as a potential rewriter and literature as an essential remedy for a sense of
loss and exile.
Part 3 (Chapters 8–10), Perspectives - Types of Distance and
Proximity, discusses the distance and proximity both in geographical and
more conceptual senses, and argues that “transfer processes do not only depend
on more or less immediate cultural exchange between neighbors, or even of an
intracultural kind, but also on intellectual and ideological norms” (p. 16).
Chapter 8 first reflects on the notion of cultural transfer, viewing it as a
paradigm for cultural analysis. Then, it elaborates on the three components of
this paradigm, namely the subject or agent of a cultural transfer, the act of
transferring, and the object of cultural transfers. Through the case study of
the Baroque, it concludes that the transfer of the same cultural material may
have different results under different historical circumstances.
Chapter 9 highlights the importance of circulation between the
continents. It discusses the reception process of the cultural transfer concept
in Brazil and demonstrates how the concept was imported, discussed, and
resemantized. It analyzes various mediators in Brazilian cultural transfers and
argues the notion of resemantization and its translation mirror its reception
process in Brazil.
Chapter 10 investigates the cultural triangular relations between
Scandinavia, Germany, and France. After introducing its research topic and
objectives, theoretical and methodological premises, it discusses the ways in
which cultural transformations were conducted by translations and
literary-historical scholarship. Through that investigation, it concludes that
“geography and political and socio-cultural traditions underwrite a relatively
stable triangle of cultural-historically relevant activities” (p. 242).
This book profoundly rethinks the notions, approaches, and
perspectives of cultural transfer studies, providing readers a new appreciation
and deeper understanding of cultural transfer. Primarily, its outstanding
contribution lies in providing the transnational and dynamic perspectives of
cultural transfer studies from global settings to micro-analyses, which
enriches perspectives and approaches to cultural transfer studies. Secondly,
this book offers a series of cases from a variety of fields such as literature,
painting, and history, which makes it interesting and accessible to readers.
Meanwhile, case studies in this book provide readers with new insights to
consider cultural transfer as a multidisciplinary approach that deserves to be
studied from various methodological frameworks. Moreover, the authors provide definitions
related to cultural transfer studies, such as “the act of writing transnational
literary history” (p. 70), which makes the notions of cultural transfer much
easier to read and understand.
On the other hand, some minor inadequacies should be mentioned.
For example, as one of the book series Approaches to Translation
Studies, this book should pay more attention
to the relevance between cultural transfer studies and translation studies. The
structure of Chapter 6 is unbalanced and divided into just two sections. Section
6.1 provides an overview of genre cultural transfer, while section 6.2 features
a case study that constitutes the vast majority of this chapter.
All in all, this book will be a valuable reference to
postgraduates and academics in culture studies, translation studies, and
neighboring disciplines.
Zhen Liu
Huazhong University of Science and
Technology, Hubei University of Economics
liuzhen@hbue.edu.cn
Chunlong
Zhao
China
University of Petroleum (Beijing)
zhaoclong@126.com