Beyond the Pale: Art in the Age of Multicultural Translation Homi K. Bhabha A boundary is not that at which some- thing stops but, os the Greeks recog: nized, the boundary is that from which something begins is presencing. Heidegger, ‘Building, Dweling, Thinking” {tis the trope of our fimes to locate the question of culture in the realm of the beyond. At the century's edge, we are less exercised by annihilation—the death of the author—or epiphany—the birth of the “subject.” Our existence todoy is marked by a tenebrous sense of sur- vival, living on the borderlines of the “pre: sent,” for which there seems to be no proper nome, other than that shifting profix “post”: postmodernism, posicolonialism, postfominism. . The “beyond” is neither a new hori zon, nor a leaving behind of the past... . Beginnings ond endings moy be the sus- taining myths of the middle years; but in the fin de siécle, we find ourselves in the ‘moment of transit where space and time cross to produce complex figures of differ ‘ence and idenity, past and present and outside, inclusion and exclusion. For, above all else, there is a sense of disorien tation, a disturbance of direction, in the “beyond”: an exploratory, restless move- ment caught so well in the French rendi- tion of the word—au delé—here and there, on all sides, fort/da, hither and thither, back and forth." The move away from the singularities of “class” or “gender” as primary concep- tual and organizationol categories has resulted in an awereness of the multiple subject positions—of race, gender, gener- ation, institutional location, geopolitical locale, sexual orientation—that inhak ‘any claim to identity in the (postmodern ‘world. What is theoretically innovative, and politcolly crucial, is the need to think beyond narratives of origin and initiatory, initia! subjects and to focus on thoseath ‘pte: relix jiffer ilies ncep- moments or processes that are produced inthe articulation of “differences.” These between” spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood and ‘communal representations that initiate new signs of cultural diflerence and innovative fies of collaboration and contestation. tis in the emergence of the inter stices Ihe overlap and displacement of domoins of difference—that the inter. subjective and collective experiences of rationness, community interest, or cultural value are negotiated. How are subjects formed “in between," or in excess of, the sum of the “ports of difference (usually intoned as race/class/gender, et.)# How do sitctagies of reprosentotion or empow- trment come to be formulated in the competing claims of communities where, despite shared histories of deprivation ‘nd discrimination, the exchange of va ues, meanings, and priorities may not ‘always be collaborative and diclogical, but may be profoundly antagonistic, con- fictual, and even incommensurable? The force of these questions is borne out by the “language of recent social crises sparked off by histories of cultural diferonce. Conflicts in south contral Los Angeles between Koreans and African. ‘Americans focused on the concept of respect"—a term forged on the border- lines of ethnic deprivation that is, at ence, the sign of racialized violence and the symptom of social victimoge. In the aftr: math of The Satanic Verses affair in Great Bitain, black ond trish Feminists, despite ‘heir different constituencies, have made common cause agoins! the “racialization of religion” as the dominant discourse through which the state represents their conflicts and struggles, however secular or even “sexual” they may be. Terms of cultural engagement, whether ‘antagonistic or affiiative, are produced performatively: “difference” is not so much a reflection of pre-given ethnic or cultural traits set in the tablets of “Fixed” traditions as it is a complex, ongoing negotiation—among minorities, against assimilation. The “right” to signify con- corns not so much the celebration of the pessistence of tradition as much as an ‘acknowledgment of is powers of rein- sctiption and iteration: its forms of di placement and relocation. The borderline engagements of cullural diference may as offen be consensual as conflictual; they ‘may confound our definitions of tradition ‘and modernity; realign the customary boundaries between the private and the public, high ond low; and challenge nor- mative expectations of development and progress. Representing cultures “at the border- 1s," 0s this Biennial attempts to do, is a demanding double act between artist ‘ond curator. What ensues is not, os was once believed, the flagrant contradiction between the museum as a space of con- tainment or “normalization” and radical crt practices, opposed to commodifica- space without walls. There is something too schematic about this demarcation of what it means to be inside or outside on institution, oF an ideology; a strident sepo- rofion that loses the sense that “museums necessarily conjoin conkadictory desires, including the mature (propertied) ond the youthful (less so} and perhaps ovon the reactionary and the subversive; .. . thenoture of museumgoing enmeshes the seemingly serious and the opparently voyouresque.”? Installed within the very ‘act of display, in the coniradictory stuc- ture of spectotorship itself, there exists an ambivalence about the representation of cultural difference that creates a produc- five tension between the borderline artist and the fronline curator. The curatorial intention posits a “pur posefulness about the object,” writes the istorian Michael Baxandall.? The of he object consists neither in the producer's mental image of it, nor in the fulfillment of he curator’s pedogogy- ‘The intentionality of display les in oper- ing up on ctive space between object ‘ond label that propels the spectator in a * shutling process,” back ond forth, hither ‘ond thither, between culturally informat ‘causes and visually interesting objects. Baxandall sugges that in conditions of cultural difference or unfamiliarity “the sy ‘emotic incompatibility of another culture's ‘concept with one’s own culture not only makes the viewer work but reminds him or her of cultural difference.” The act of translation between culures is effected through the exacerbation of what is cullr- ally incommensurable or strange, which then allows an understanding ofthe “other” to emerge rom an alison, on uncanny alienation, of one’s own cultural priority. However, “lo be reminded of cultural dit ference” in the pas! tense, os Boxandall hos expressed it, carries on unmistakable sense that cultural differences are pre- given, inherent within organic cultures, ted prior tothe act of translation or Boxandall’s notion of a “shutting” intentionality of the art object makes it possible to suggest, however, that the act of cultural translation is an ambivalent process, and that cross-cultural under. standing requires the recognition of an “open border” in between objects and cultures, which challenges the assumed, ‘outotelic authority of both the knower and the known, the gazer and the gazed upon. It remains the contribution of the borderline artists in this show to perform ‘a pootics of the open border or, as Ive doscribed it above, to enact the dialectic of cultural difference displayed in the “interstices,” the overlappings ond inter leavings, the hither and thither. "| wanted to make shapes or set up situations thal ore kind of open. . . My ‘work has a lot to do with « kind of fui, ‘a movement back and forth, not making @ claim to any specific or essential way of boeing,” writes Renée Green, the Africor- ‘American artis. She reflects on the need to understand cultural dference as the pro- ction of minority identities that “splt”— ‘are estranged unto thomselves—in the oct cof being arliculated into a collective body: ‘Multiculturalism doesn’t reflect the ‘complexity of the situation as | face it daily. ... IW requires o person fo step ‘outside of him/herself to actualy s ‘what he/she is doing. | don’t want io condemn wellmeaning people and say (lke those Tshirts you can buy ‘on the street) “I's 0 black thing, you wouldn't understand." To me that’s essentializing blackness.> Paltical empowerment and the enlarge ment of the muliculturalist cause come from posing questions of solidarity and “4