Untranscendable Orientalism

Coming to terms with China,20th century Australian novels is still full of othering images,negative discourses and demonizing rhetoric,which shows an untranscendable Orientalism and showcases a diversified Australian identity and Western discourse in different historical periods.This thesis focuses on Australia’s literary imagination of China and investigates the problems of their cultural representation through a close reading of four typical Australian novels,i.e.,Mary Gaunt’s A Wind from the Wilderness(1919),George Johnston’s The Far Road(1962),Margaret Jones’s The Confucius Enigma(1979)and Nicholas Jose’s Avenue of Eternal Peace(1989).Australian novelists and critics believe that trans-cultural writing offers interpretations of the other culture and trans-cultural reading is a response to such interpretations.They serve to create cultural dialogues for mutual understanding.In this way,a shared knowledge of humanities and a beautiful vision will be constructed.However,w(?)are disappointed to find that the four novels demonstrate an untranscendable Orientalism with Australian characteristics.As a tradition in Western representation of the other culture,Orientalism has been highly institutionalized and permeated into various aspects of Western discourse.Based on Edward Said’s Orientalism and Stuart Hall’s Cultural Representation Theory,this paper tries to analyze the haunting Orientalism in Australian trans-cultural writing about China.This dissertation consists of three parts.The first part begins with an introduction of the project and the theoretical framework,followed by a literature review and the layout of the thesis.The second part is the body of this dissertation,which is divided into four chapters,respectively focusing on one of the novels under discussion to reveal its oriental discourse.Chapter one analyzes the Modernist discourse in Mary Gaunt ’s A Wind from the Wilderness and questions the idea of "Whiteness First".The novel describes the Chinese people,criticizes Confucianism and inscribes the problems of China against the Anglo-Saxon Ideals.The ugly stereotypes in Chinese manhood,female image and racial feature assert the ideal images of "British Gentleman","New Woman" and "White Australia identity".The novel represents a cultural dialogue between the rising"Anglo-Saxon Ideals" and a declining Confucianism at the turn of the 20th century,showing how Mary Gaunt challenges the values of Chinese civilization interpreted by Confucian scholar Gu Hongming.What’s hidden behind is a desire to guide the Chinese to understand the world as they do so that they can keep the orient under control.The so-called "China problem" is the problem to interfere in Chinese domestic affairs.Such Oriental discourse was repeated again and again in the English narratives about the other culture so that "Whiteness First" becomes a deep-rooted concept.Chapter two analyses George Johnston’s The Far Road with a focused debate on the problem of "freedom" and the suppressed Sinophobia in Western Existentialism.The novel represents China as an uncanny world stage which showcases an absurd exile journey for freedom.Johnston reveals that the western dream of liberty,equality and fraternity is nothing but "the liberal hegemony".The suppressed uncanny psychology in Existentialist philosophy is the source of Western Sinophobia.Chapter three borrows Edward Said’s method in Covering Islam and offers an analysis of media discourse in Margaret Jones’ The Confucius Enigma,critiquing the journalistic approach that Western media so often adopt when writing about China.Such selective media coverage produces a perception of China as a "threat" to the West and promotes a dominant hostile inclination in western readers.Such media covering is still working in today’s Australian story about China.Chapter four deals with the Western view of translating the other culture with an analysis of how Jose translates three untranslatable Chinese elements in Avenue of Eternal Peace.When translating the idea of "Tao",Jose focuses on the difference between western modernity and Chinese modernity.When translating the spirit of "encountering sorrow",he focuses on the affinity in transnational humanism,which imposes the western values on Chinese situation.When translating Chinese art,he focuses on creativity,which shows a discourse violence in translation.Such deconstructing approach forms a superior position of self over the other culture.Cultural appropriation is a highly disguised Orientalism and will lead to the unevenness of cultures in world literature system.English translators need a higher translation ethics and kindly embraces different meanings of the other cultures.The last part summarizes the major findings and contributions of this paper.Orientalism is deeply seated in the representation system of Western humanities:Cultural Anthropology,Existentialism,Media Coverage and Translation Studies.The stereotyping representations produce and circulate Western knowledge about China as "uncivilized barbarians","the uncanny","a threat to the West" and "the untranslatable".It reveals that in the 20th century,Australian cultural subjects still felt safer to be part of the West,they were not willing to jump out of the comfort zone and had to follow an untranscendable western knowledge discourse.Their cultural genes are inherited from a Western culture with negative elements like the British sense of island,the American cultural hegemony and the Anglophone racial centralism,which still influences contemporary Australians.If Australian literature aims at a higher transcultural objective,they need to face these negative elements and cultivate a better self.