Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference 14-17th December 2016 Program Index

professional, or of “making do” (de Certeau 1988) often arising out of economic necessity and/or growing up
in rural areas/on farms. Finally, many respondents speak of early supportive educational experiences, with a
disproportionate number of having attended at some stage of their formal education a Montessori or
Steiner/Waldorf model school.
3O Time, Tide and Translation: Transnational Contemporaneity and Strategic Possibilities of Differences in
Japanese Queer Politics (Chair, TBA)
The important roles transnational exchanges of people, resources, and ideas play in social and cultural movements
has increasingly attracted scholarly attention. The transnational contemporaneity of diverse social and cultural
movements in distinct geopolitical locations has become a familiar phenomenon due to – not exclusively, but nor to
a small extent – technological advance. The specific ways in which translation – linguistic, cultural, and/or political –
mediates, facilitates, sometimes hinders and, at other times, even creates transnational exchanges is an area that
requires greater exploration. Whereas the concept of translation, if understood in terms of relations between “the
original” and its delayed version (in a different language), necessarily presupposes a certain gap between the two on
a rather linear timeline, in this panel we will focus on the contemporaneity of translation: In the socio-cultural
conditions that expand across and beyond geopolitical boundaries, and yet are still grounded in specific
political/cultural differences, what kind of translations have been taken up as active and contemporary political
operations; what and/or how has translation achieved political intervention; to what extent has translation been
successful and in which areas has it failed? This panel aims to explore these questions in the context of sexual
politics in Japan. Through three papers, discussing diverse linguistic, cultural and political translative works in Japan
from different times over the last twenty years, the panel will point to queer political possibilities in the operation of
translation that so far have not been fully examined in the “global” expansion of LGBT rights politics.
Akiko Shimizu
Claire Maree
SHIMIZU, Akiko will discuss the important theoretical translations carried out by Japanese literary critics in
the mid-nineties. While these works have sometimes been considered as part of a depoliticized and mere
intellectual trend almost exclusively confined within academia, and as having very little to do with queer
politics in Japan compared to academic contributions made by sociologists, the paper demonstrates how
they were carefully and intentionally chosen and presented with specific political contexts in mind and
helped to lay the groundwork for queer culture and activisms in the mid- to late nineties. -It- This paper will
also argue that in fact mainstream sexual politics in Japan since then have developed in a way that has failed
to grasp some of the important theoretical/political perspectives, namely feminist and postcolonial,
contained in these works.
Claire MAREE will examine the contemporaneity of intralingual translations and textual layerings common to
popular Japanese television. A microanalysis of variety television and news reports on contemporary LGBT
activists and LGBT issues demonstrates how an illusion of authenticity and authority is upheld by layerings of
text which appear in synch with the audio track. The “correct” and “authoritative” translation of LGBT is
inscribed onto the broadcast product through a post-production and pre-broadcasting process of selective
entextualization. In this intralingual movement, sexual minorities are inscribed onto the screen in ways that
authenticate heteronormative local interpretations of LGBT rights.
Kasuyoshi Kawasaka
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