Negotiating Culture Space and Identity: The Translation and Analysis of Tongzhi and Ku-er Fiction

4.1 Migrant Identity and Translation
Broadly speaking, migrant identity can be seen as a representation of minority identity. In Translation and Minority, Lawrence Venuti provides an overview of the concept of ‘minority’. To quote Venuti: “I understand ‘minority’ to mean a cultural or political position that is subordinate” (1998: 135). The marginal position migrant individuals hold in a foreign culture affirms this description of ‘minor’. To characterize minority, Venuti borrows Deleuze and Guattari’s definition of minority literature: “The three characteristics of minor literature are the deterritorialization of language, the connection of the individual to a political immediacy, and the collective assemblage of enunciation” (Deleuze and Gauttari 1986: 18). These three characteristics will be revisited to in discussions on tongzhi/ ku-er identity and translation. Significantly, Venuti points out that although minority is defined by difference from the majority, the alienation is itself a source of instability and innovation (1998: 139). The innate instability associated with migrant identity, seen from this perspective, can potentially enable the creation of new forms of expression, communities and identities.
As mentioned in the introduction, migration represents both a literal and metaphorical process. Chambers, in the introduction of Migrancy, Culture and Translation, states: “Migration, together with the enunciation of cultural borders and crossings, is also deeply inscribed in the itineraries of much contemporary reasoning” (1994: 2). According to Chambers, our condition (in a metropolitan context at least) can be seen to resemble that of the migrant individual. Technological advances, as well as factors such as globalisation and cosmopolitanism, create the possibility of physical and virtual mobility on an unprecedented scale. Interestingly, Chambers considers the uncertainty of ‘root’ in the migrant condition to be both constraining and liberating. While migrancy is a state that offers little in terms of anchorage, it does open up the possibility to engage with multiple cultures, languages and identities. Chamber cites Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition (1958) as a case in point. She states: “To live ‘elsewhere’ means to continually find yourself in a conversation in which different identities are recognised, exchanged and mixed, but do not vanish” (1994: 18). This fluidity creates space that enables different cultural and sexual identities to emerge and find their expression in the translation of tongzhi and ku-er literature.
From Chambers perspective, translation is essential to the migrant experience. As he remarks simply: “Through wanders. It [referring to the migrant person] migrates. Requires translation” (1994: 4). Both Malena (2003) and Cronin (2006) apply the metaphor of migrancy in Translation Studies, and further argue that migrant individuals are ‘translated beings’. To quote Cronin:
Migrants are translated beings in countless ways. He or she moves from a source language and culture to a target language and culture so that translation takes place both in the physical sense of movement or displacement and in the symbolic sense of the shift from one way of speaking, writing and interpreting the world to another. (Cronin, 2006: 45, original emphasis)
In other words, migrant persons are expected to ‘translate’ themselves from their home culture to their designated culture. Significantly, Malena considers the ‘perfect translation’ to be an invisible one, in which the migrant individual either creates the illusion of ‘native’ identity, or alternatively imposes their foreignness on to the target culture (2003: 9) It should be noted here that Malena’s interpretation of ‘migrant identity’ is reminiscent of Venuti’s concept of foreignisation and domestication in Translation Studies. For Venuti, the aforementioned concepts are strategies available to the translator. Take domestication as an example: the translator can choose to transform, or ‘domesticise’ the foreign elements of the original text to render it more accessible to the target text reader. According to Venuti’s proposal, the process of translation is an “inevitable domestication” (1995: 9). As he states: “[t]he goal of communication can only be achieved when the foreign text is no longer inscrutably foreign but made comprehensible in a distinctively domestic form” (1995: 9). Whether all translation can be seen as domestication is open to debate; Venuti’s statement nevertheless resonate with Malena’s description of migrants, as individuals that transform their identities in ways that are ‘comprehensible’ to the target culture.
However, ‘perfect’ transformations are rarely attainable; Malena recognizes that migrant individuals inevitably maintain elements of their original identity: “[w]hile some migrants achieve a high degree of translatability, hence invisibility, most remain visible because they carry along untranslatable components, ranging from visual appearance to cultural practices and beliefs” (2003: 9). There will always be aspects of the original identity that remains immutable. Her assessment, resonates with Arendt’s earlier proposal that identities do not simply vanish, but can be recognized or mixed.
The visibility of ‘difference’ can have an enabling effect on the designated culture, because the very existence of difference questions what is accepted as the norm. To quote Malena:
Migrants forever occupy an in-between space but their presence in a given context has a dramatic effect on their surroundings: the notion of difference indeed becomes fluid by subverting the norm through the sheer multiplicity of newcomers. (Malena 2003: 12)
The formation of tongzhi and ku-er echoes Malena’s assertion that social norms can be subverted through the introduction of new identities. The scholar Liou Liang-ya for example, cites tongzhi and ku-er as part of the plethora of movements that ‘reconstruct historical memory’ in 90s Taiwan (2006: 14). To elaborate, tongzhi and ku-er reconstruct the meaning of (homo) sexual identity into forms that are both public and political. The prolific production of tongzhi and ku-er literature in the early 90s is a case in point through fiction: writers present to the power hierarchy and public alternative representations of sexual identity. In this respect, tongzhi and ku-er also resonate with Jonathan Rutherland’s proposal that: “[e]ven as difference is pathological and refused legitimacy, new terms and identities are produced on the margins” (1990: 22). Rutherland’s proposal corresponds with Venuti’s earlier assertion that minority identity can be a source of innovation. Despite the fact that tongzhi/ku-er identities only occupy a marginal position in society, they are still able to affect social change in an unprecedented way.
In summary, migrant and tongzhi/ku-er identities embody Hall’s proposal that identity is a state of ‘becoming’ rather than ‘being’ (1996: 4). While migrant individuals may not have a fixed cultural identity, they can choose which aspects of their home culture to preserve and which aspect of their target culture to adopt. By not being wholly part of either culture, the migrant individual is paradoxically part of both. This multiplicity of cultural identities is also the very characteristic that defines tongzhi an ku-er. The next section will focus on the topic of diaspora, specifically how diaspora is perceived and furthermore, how it manifests in communities both real and imaginary.
4.2 Queer Diaspora and Imagined Communities
The concept of diaspora is often cited in discussions on migrancy and community. The scholar Robin Cohen notes the term originates from the Greek word ‘speiro’ (to sow) and the preposition ‘dia’ (over); the combination was used by the ancient Greeks to describe migration and colonialism (1987: ix). For certain cultures, however, diaspora holds a more sinister meaning. Citing Jewish, Palestinian, Armenian and African groups as examples, Cohen argues that diaspora for these communities can also signify: “a collective trauma, a banishment, where one dreams of home but lives in exile” (1987: ix). Diaspora, in this respect, becomes a term to describe the peripheral and the displaced. James Clifford, in his overview of diaspora studies, argues that the term diaspora implies political struggle and marginalization. As he states: “the term diaspora is a signifier, not simply of transnationality and movement, but of political struggles to define the local, as distinctive community, in historical context of displacement” (1994: 308, original emphasis).
As manifestations of marginalization and displacement, diaspora is not limited to national groups. Clifford considers diaspora to follow specific ‘map’ and ‘histories’ that represent distinct versions of intercultural experience (1997: 266). David Buchbinder’s study on American queer history can be seen as an example of minority groups/histories appropriating the concept of diaspora.

For Buchbiner, diaspora is a crucial way for minority groups to ‘define themselves as a community’ (2003: 616). Diaspora is a useful framework through which minoritised individuals can align themselves. The longing for a geographical homeland and the very image of ‘home’, in this respect, can be metaphorical. As Buchbinder proposes:

[…] the development of the idea of a diaspora makes possible certain conditions by which such a minority is enabled to cohere and to identity itself both socially and politically, and hence to develop the sense of culture specific to that group. (2003: 617)
In Buchbinder’s study, the development of a diasporaic culture is part of queer history, and he compares the exile status of gay and lesbian individuals to diasporic communities. Though not defined by a physical location, gay and lesbian groups share with other diasporic groups similar political conditions: ‘in’ society but never ‘of’ it (Buchbinder 2003: 618). The search for ‘home’, in the case of gay and lesbian individuals, is embodied in what Buchbinder describes as an ‘imagined community’. The description specifically refers to Benedict Anderson’s (1991) influential study on nation and national identity, in which he argues that all nations and communities, however large or small are built on the individual’s image of a collective nation. To quote Anderson: “It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never known most of their fellow-members […] yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion. (Anderson, 1983: 6; original emphasis).
For Buchbinder, ‘queer diaspora’ is a contemporary representation of Anderson’s imagined community. Examining the formation of homosexual identities throughout history, he notes the image of ‘homeland’ is normally based in ‘time’ rather than space. To elaborate, Buchbinder argues that gay and lesbian people (though his examples mostly derive from gay discourse) either yearns for a nostalgic past embodied by the Ancient Greeks, or alternatively key points in gay history, such as the inception of the American gay movement in the 1970s (2003: 629). However, while both offer an ‘imagined homeland’, they are limited to a Western, gender specific definition. ‘Queer diaspora’, therefore, becomes an alternative point of reference for individuals who do not necessarily fit easily into the categories of ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’. As Buchbinder notes, the term represents the ‘inclusive politics of difference’, incorporating other forms of sexual identity such as bisexuality, transexuality and even aspects of heterosexuality (2003: 629). Enabling the formation of a broader diaspora that transcends gender and culture. The very nature of ‘queer’ as a community is succinctly summarized by Buchbinder:
“Queer” thus holds out the possibility of a new imagined homeland in the present, a homeland that extends beyond the traditional boundary of place and nation, and across the traditional categories established by the culture’s investment in certain privileged binaries. (Buchbinder 2003: 631-632)
Buchbinder’s concept of an imagined homeland corresponds with a translational, transcultural perspective of queer community. In recent years there has been an increasing amount of research (see Grewal and Kaplan 2001, Hall 2001, Martin 2003) on the convergences between global and local gay, lesbian and queer movements. Grewal and Kaplan’s (2001) study on the ‘transnational’ in sexual identity/community, for example, provides a useful starting point for exploring the concept of ‘glocal’ diaspora. The two scholars advocate research in new, transnational areas of study on sexuality, including migrancy, travel/tourism and cyber culture. Considering the relationship between ‘global’ and ‘local’, Grewal and Kaplan argue that the two are not mutually exclusive, but rather interactive, to quote: “[…] the local is often constituted through the global, and vice versa” (2001: 671). While Grewal and Kaplan do not cite specific examples, the assertions nevertheless resonate with Martin’s earlier proposal (as cited in the introduction) that tongzhi and ku-er identities are “examples of glocalisation in the domain of sexual knowledge” (2003a: 23). By extension, tongzhi and ku-er diaspora also rework and appropriate elements both local and global.
An interesting manifestation of a ‘glocal’ diaspora can be found in Taiwan’s tongzhi/ku-er cyber communities. Berry and Martin (2003), in a comparative study^. of Korean and Taiwanese online lesbian, gay and queer⁶ communities, note that the anonymity of cyber culture can take on significance in societies where l/g/q identity may be accepted legally, but not socially (2003: 89). Through questionnaires distributed on Bulletin Board Sites (BBS), the two scholars aim to find out whether globalizing, primarily Americanised version of g/l/q culture⁷ has a homogenizing or heterogenizing effect on cyber communities. Although the questionnaire failed in Taiwan due to the shortage of participants, Berry and Martin nevertheless observed several trends within the online platforms. One example they cited is the popularity of the moniker ‘La-Zi’ for lesbian users on the World Wide Web. Berry and Martin point out the name is both a phonetic nod to the English ‘lesbian’, as well as a literary reference to the protagonist in Qiu Maojin’s seminal female tongzhi/ku-er novel, The Crocodile’s Journal (2003: 105). As the two conclude:
The term, then, is reducible to neither of the cititations it performs: neither the location of local subjection to the “imperialism” of English language-based sexual organizations, nor a form of “purely local” sexual understandings. (Berry and Martin 2003: 105)
The example illustrates that identity (and in turn identification) can be derived from multiple cultural ‘roots’. One aspect on which Berry and Martin place particular emphasis is the notion of syncreticism. As they argue: “we find syncretism a more productive concept than hybridity, which invokes a reproductive rather than a political metaphor and risks assuming the pure origins of the hybridized elements” (2003: 89). The la-zi identity can be seen as a product of this cultural syncretisim. Furthermore, the existence of la-zi in the World Wide Web can itself be seen as a representation of diaspora, as new online users adopt the name, continuously generating and aligning themselves with this identity.
Paradoxically, queer diaspora is both concrete and fluid. It offers minoritized individuals a ‘home’, yet this ‘home’ is based on a collective imagination, and is not necessarily constrained by social or cultural regulation. To borrow Stuart Hall’s definition of the Black diasporic experience, diaspora is: “ […] the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity; by a conception of ‘identity’ which lives with and through, not despite, difference. (1990: 235). In the same way, queer diaspora and queer diasporic identity are concepts based on recognitions of diversities. How textual diaspora overlaps with real life diaspora will be examined in the next section.

4.3 From Textual Diaspora to Real Life Diaspora
Among the interweaving strands of topics discussed, fictional and real-life communities overlaps. To illustrate this, Keith Harvey’s study on gay writing and translation provides point of comparison with community and diaspora. One aspect Harvey emphasises in his study (and one that is underlined in this paper) is that: “internal identity formation is closely associated with external identity projection” (2003: ). The process of ‘internal identity formation’ is associated with gay writing and translation. As Harvey states:
“gay” writing is […] a literary genre that explores the parameters of gay experience in order to validate an identity position and create an interaction space for the formulation and reception of gay voices.
Harvey’s descriptions of gay writing correspond with the overarching concept of ‘imagined community’. This in turn resonates with Clifford’s description of diasporic discourse:
Diaspora discourse articulates, or bends together, both roots and routes to construct what Gilroy describes as alternate public spheres – forms of community consciousness and solidarity that maintain identifications outside the national time/space, in order to live inside, with a difference. (1997: 255)
Whether viewed as an ‘interaction space’ or ‘alternative public sphere’, both Harvey and Clifford consider discourse a haven for isolated individuals. Furthermore, Clifford (1991) mentions the tension between utopia and dystopia in the representations of diaspora. In one of the studies Clifford cites by William Safran (1991), the search/imagining of a homeland can potentially be a ‘utopian response’ to the current dystopia (1997: 248). Although Safran’s study is referring to the Jewish diasporic consciousness in particular, parallels can be drawn with contemporary diasporic phenomenon. While diasporic discourse is born out of discrimination and exclusion, the subsequent reception by readers can be inclusive. In addition, diasporic community portrayed in text can be translated and transformed.
Tongzhi and ku-er writing, in this respect, has elements of both gay and diasporic discourse. Although aspects of tongzhi and ku-er culture will be discussed in more depth in respective chapters, one area in Taiwan - Taipei New Park, provides an illustration of a real life diaspora crossing over into textual diaspora. Considered by many scholars to be a significant landmark of Taiwanese tongzhi history, Taipei New Park is incorporated inmale tongzhi culture. Martin, in Sitauting Sexualities, discussed extensively the history of Taipei New Park. Interestingly, Martin’s sees New Park as a multiple rather than singular presence, characterized by various political, literary and historical representations (2003: 48). The history of Taipei New Park as an area for gay activity became associated with the contemporary tongzhi movement, as Martin states:
If New Park is a ground, then it is a shifting one, representing not the roots of the place conceived as fixed and stable, but the unpredictable and ongoing placements and re-placements of tongxinglian in 90s Taiwan” (2003: 48).
This link between the past and the present can be enabled by textual representations, and New Park is as much embedded in Taiwanese literary history as it is to political history. The New Park gay scene is most famously encapsulated in Pai Hsien Yung’s male tongzhi novel Nie Zie [evil sons] (1986), The opening line of the novel sets the scene:
There are no days in our kingdom, only nights. As soon as the sun comes up, our kingdom goes into hiding, for it is an unlawful nation; we have no government and no constitution, we are neither recognized nor respected by anyone, our citizenry is little more than rabble (Goldblatt’s translation, 1995: 17).
The metaphor of ‘kingdom’, represented by 國度 [country] in the Chinese original, signals the formation of an alternative ‘nation’. New Park in the passage is presented as a dystopian diaspora, and the ‘citizens’ are ironically a collective without organization. The sense of exile is conveyed through the absence of ‘home’ – the inhabitants are outcasts from the traditional family structure because of their homosexuality. Martin, in Situating Sexualities, outlines the uncertainty of jiao [home] guo [country] as embodied by New Park and its inhabitants, the ‘evil sons’. Martin draws a parallel with the exile status of the sons from their family with the ambiguous status of Taiwan as a ‘homeland’. Taking into account of Taiwan’s complex colonial history; first as a colony of imperial China, then a colony of imperial Japan, followed by occupation by the Sinocentric Kuomingtang Party, a sense of Taiwanese national identity is a relatively new phenomenon. The uncertainty of belonging, as embodied by the outsider status of tongzhi individuals, is also parallel to a national scale.
As Martin (2003) notes however, discussions on tongzhi and ku-er culture resonate beyond the confines of jiao [home] and guo [country]. Martin proposes a global and local perspective, in which the emphasis is on the “twin discursive sites of ‘globe’ and the ‘city’”(2003: 71). The contrast can be extended to between tradition and (post)modernity. In Chu Tien-wen’s Notes of a Desolate Man, New Park is relocated to a junction between the past and the present. As a contemporary gay man, the protagonist Little Shao visits this iconic landmark. The following extract from the novel illustrates:
All night long I would sit by the pond in New Park […] I followed people soft as mud, people whose skin sagged like shar-peris. I also followed some old guys whose arms tattooed with the Nationalistic icon of a bright sun and blue sky. They were like Old Li, who was in charge of answering the phone and making announcements in the housing projects when I was a kid, I was shocked to discover they were still alive. (Goldblatt’s translation 1990: 110)
In the passage, New Park represents nostalgia, literally in the veteran’s tattoo of: “Nationalistic icon of a bright sun and blue sky” – the emblem for the KMT party. Martin mentions the park as located in a ‘post [KMT] party, post jia [home] guo [country] era: “[…]jia-guo are on their way to becoming only nostalgic images like childhood’s neighborhood life and communal telephones” (2003: 105). Rather than seeing himself as part of the community, the protagonist views the inhabitants of New Park as figures from his past: “They were like Old Li, who was in charge of answering the phones [...] when I was a kid”. The concept of ‘home’ in this instance is more detached, and New Park, instead of being an individual diaspora, is now part of the hybridized landscape. While the city in Notes of a Desolate Man will be discussed in more depth in future chapters, it can be seen here that diaspora is transformative - the same location can occupy different textual spaces.
One comment Clifford makes about diasporic communities is that ‘they are not here to stay’, because the community is in a state of conflict: “Diaspora cultures […] mediate, in a lived tension, the experiences of separation and entanglement, of living here and remembering desiring another place” (1997: 255). Both the formation of the kingdom in Niezi and the sense nostalgia in Notes of a Desolate Man can be seen to embody this desire for ‘another place’ – creating their version of an imagined ‘homeland’ from an actual location. Textual diaspora therefore is paradoxically both transient and permanent, immortalized by the writer in a fixed location yet changing with each textual representations.
Lastly, in the discussion on textual and gay diaspora, there is an instance in Niezi in which the gay community is portrayed from a heterosexist viewpoint. The ‘kingdom’, however dystopic, nevertheless offers a semblance of protection. This secret diaspora became sensationalized, when a fictional ‘expose’ on the community was published in a tabloid newspaper. The below passage offers a point of comparison to earlier textual diasporas: