Heyman Center Common Room
Meeting 2
Eleanor Grabowski, French and Romance Philology, “Decolonization and Repetition:
Palimpsests in the Work of Mouloud Feraoun and Phạm Duy Khiêm.”
Abstract: This chapter discusses the representation of interracialized couples in the works of two
mid-twentieth-century francophone writers, Mouloud Feraoun and Phạm Duy Khiêm. Highlighting
moments in which characters themselves engage in acts of writing and rewriting, I argue that the
novels are palimpsests of new and old discourses about what was called, at the time, “mixed
marriage.” Ultimately, I suggest that these writings and rewritings are part of larger efforts to rewrite the relationships between France and Algeria, on the one hand, and France and Vietnam, on the
other.
Joanna Lee-Brown, East Asian Languages and Cultures, “Translating the Language of
God”
Abstract: This chapter examines Zhang Chengzhi’s engagement with the Quran in his recent essay
collections. Zhang offers interpretations of the Quran that frame Islam as an internationalist, anti-
imperialist, and anti-capitalist religion. His translations and exegesis of Islamic terms such as umma,
dhikr, jihad, and zakat are translingual acts of reading and meaning-making that offer new grounds
for internationalist solidarity in the convergence of the political and religious. Such an endeavor
raises questions of translation and reading. Zhang both stretches the Quran beyond its Muslim
context and insists on reading the original Arabic as the mediating tongue for the language of Allah,
foregrounding both its untranslatability and universality. His distance from the Arabic language
inspires an unorthodox and expansive reading of the Quran and the Islamic tradition that offers a
spiritual and revolutionary vision of emancipation for all peoples. Thus, the untranslatable does not
limit solidarity, but rather generates possibilities for solidarity through the language of God, which
sublates and transcends human difference. This language is posited as an antidote to an increasingly
despairing world bereft of an appropriate language to respond to the crisis of our times. In a post-
Bandung moment, when discourses of nation-state and national determination no longer suffice as
horizons of emancipation, Zhang’s grappling with the inimitability of the Quran offers us new
perspectives on the problem of (un)translatability and thus otherness in literary and translation
theory, presenting new visions for global solidarity.
