Traces 4: Translation, Biopolitics, Colonial Difference

Introduction: Addressing the Multitude of Foreigners, Echoing Foucault

INTRODUCTION: ADDRESSING THE MUlTITUDE OF FOREIGNERS, ECHOING FOUCAULT N AOKI SAKAI ANO JO SOLOMO Since its inception, Trace ha xplicilly ought to provide readers with the elements for a slrategi inlervention into Ih neo-colonial distribution of theory and data.' alurally, u h a vasl projecl requires mulliple int rventions, yet what i$ unique 10 Tra e , we think, is the temporal gambit implicit in a multilingual revue. By proposing to provide, simply at the representational level, the sam ontent at the same time to readers in several different language markets, the performative synchronicity created by Traces directly intervene in the field of ulinear progressn and "developmental stages· invariably favored by the powerful historical narrativ sof colonial mod rnily. Given the four language-markel in which Traces is currently published, il may appear rca onable 10 surmi e Ihal Easl Asia and orth America form the poles around which Ihis synchronicily is spun into action. From the oulsel, however, Traces has taken upon itself the task of opening these poles to a third variously European, South and SoutheastAsian, African, Ea t uropean, and Latin American - momenl. Or to put it more succinctly, Traces has never been intere led in legitimating its mission in terms of geopolilical regionalism. Accordingly, it is utterly misleading if some of our reader would take this fact alone as evidence of an unwitting reinscription ofthe very neo-colonial di tribution of theory and temporal lag in which Traces initially sel out to interven ! For Ihis reason, it is CS5Cnti~1 to invite readers to recall previous moments of intellectual T RA CES 1 Naok! Sakai an d Ion So lomon synchronicity in the East Asian historical experience of ·theory" precisely because these moment5 have been palimpsesticalfy written out (on account of the political milieu in which they were conceived). Far from being a call to rekindle (he flames of a bygone era when (he alterna(ive between "Pan-Asianism v . Socialismn marked the political choice of several generations before and aft r World War Two, we would intend, in a very limited fashion, to call attention to the gargantuan difficulty ofarticulating transnational intellectual work across th temporal schisms essential to he regime of the West-and-the-Resl. Pun tual moments of synchronicity such as that seen in Tanabe Hajime' innovative, critical, yet imperialist, reading of avant garde European thinkers such a Martin Heidegg r (in the early 1930s at a time when many o-called "V','estern intellectuals· might not yet have even heard the Gemlan philosopher's name) have to be understood in the context of a regime of translation and cross-reading, broadly understood, that was selective at best and quite often simply unilateral. Even today, when Tanabe's tour de force in "social ontology· remains untranslated! and, more seriously, a professional knowledge ofJilpanesc language is still virtually unheard of among non-ethni philosopher, the legacy of this mom nt of ynchronicity can only be effectively cen from th per pective of Japanese language - where it is all-tao-easily recuperated by a Iran$nalional regime of uiturali m. Among other instances of historical synchronicity buried under the historical wight of the regime of unilateral translation, Cai Yt's writings on image-thought and esth tic theory in the 1950sJ and Takeuchi Yoshimi's writings on Lu Xun' are equally emblematic. To these instances we might add a whole history of translations of Buddhi t texts and terms through the marrix of Humanism and the fantasy of a non-W tern Rother.q If French-inflected Europeanist theory draws our attention in thisvolume, we in ist that it i part of a critical project to turn inside-out the very tenns of knowledge with regard to both its positionality and the bodies that move through it. In short, we recognize the incontrovertible value of xposing theory to it5 U out5ideH - in this case, specifically the hi torical di((erence repres cd by the victory of neoLiberali m at the end of World War Two a well as the promise of international social transformation repressed by the unilateral regime of translation. It is well known that the poststructuralist uphilosophies of difference" made their mark essentially by proposing historically nuanced readings of Gennan philosophy in light of the political catadysms of the twentieth century. It is widely B - -TRACES : 4 Inlroduction acknowledged Ihalthe U.S. reception of these "philosophies ofdifference" played a pivotal...