CULTURAL TRIANGULATION IN ROMANIAN TRAVELOGUES TO CHINA UNDER COMMUNISM

• Authors: Terian Andrei
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This article highlights the heuristic usefulness of “cultural triangulation”, a concept attempting to exceed the dominant schemata for the analysis of intercultural relations in current comparative cultural studies, which are generally limited to binary mechanisms of the type (culture) A “sees”/constructs/influences/dominates (culture) B. In contrast to this reductionist tendency, I argue that all (inter)cultural processes have an ideologically filtered nature and consequently imply the mediation of the relationship between A and B via an intermediary C, to which various roles are assigned (e. g., to hide/alter/compensate/reverse various power relations, which are under no circumstances obvious or inevitable). My study explores the dynamics of this mechanism of cultural triangulation by analysing some of the most representative travelogues to China written by Romanian authors during the communist era: G. Călinescu’s Am fost în China Nouă (I’ve Been to New China, 1955), Eugen Barbu’s Jurnal în China (Chinese Diary, 1970), and Paul Anghel’s O clipă în China (One Moment in China, 1978).

Keywords

EN

CULTURAL TRIANGULATION; ROMANIAN LITERATURE; CHINA; TRAVELOGUES; COMPARATIVE CULTURAL STUDIES

• Publisher: Institute of World Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: World Literature Studies
• Year: 2019
• Volume: 11
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 16 – 30

Contributors

author

Terian Andrei

• Center of Linguistic, Literary and Cultural Studies, Faculty of Letters and Arts, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, 5–7 Victoriei Blvd.550025 Sibiu, Romania