Reaching the Uncanny Antipodes: Southeast Asian Translationscapes and the Foreclosure of the West in Siam’s Early Translations of Orientalist Literature
Phrae Chittiphalangsri, Associate Professor of Translation Studies; Chair, MA Program in Translation, Chalermprakiat Center of Translation and Interpretation, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok Thailand
Moderator: Annette Damayanti Lienau, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Registration appreciated for planning purposes.
Abstract: Southeast Asia’s geographical and cultural contrasts—between its solid mainland and fragmented archipelagos—mirror its translation dynamics, which defy conventional notions of coherence and continuity. The term “Southeast Asia” itself predates regional political unity, revealing a semantic belatedness akin to translation’s temporal lag: always following the original, yet never simply secondary. In such a fluid context, translation operates less as linguistic transfer and more as movement across discontinuous, shifting boundaries.
Building on Vicente L. Rafael’s “translationscapes,” this paper reconceives translation through antipodean and archipelagic frameworks. The antipode destabilises familiar coordinates, turning borders into generative sites. The archipelago resists linear models of source and target, offering instead a horizontal, networked vision of translation. These approaches culminate in the idea of antipodean translation—a concept rooted in difference, not equivalence.
One example proposed by this framework is the role of negation in translation—a rarely examined yet critical function. Translation not only transports meaning but also excludes, foreclosing access to the original in order to assert the symbolic authority of the target. Drawing on Jacques Lacan’s and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s concept of foreclosure, I examine Thai adaptations of two orientalist European texts—The Mikado and Der Pilger Kamanita—which reject their sources entirely. These acts of foreclosure allow Thai to assert itself as a self-contained symbolic order, reflecting deeper anxieties and aspirations related to national identity and cultural autonomy. Translation thus emerges as both a defensive and creative response to Western dominance, challenging the primacy of the original and reconfiguring the temporality of translation as a belated yet generative force.