To designate a space as “Southeast Asia” (SEA) is to engage in a particular epistemology and toponym. Positioned as the marginal extension of both Indian and Chinese spheres—hence the colonial coinage of “Indochina”—the landscape of what we now call SEA emerges from competing imperial imaginaries, translated into political discourse and variously reappropriated in local traditions. Since its articulation as a modern geopolitical category, SEA has delineated a fluid spatial formation, shaped by layered cartographies of Western colonial regimes (French Indochina, British Malaya, Burma and Borneo, Dutch East Indies, Spanish East Indies, American Philippines, Portuguese Timor), Cold War security alliances (the 1954 U.S.-led SEATO), and postcolonial regionalism (ASEAN’s vision of intra-Asian cooperation). The regional frame has come to signify a porous configuration wherein the translational operates as a mode of imagined community.
As Phrae Chittiphalangsri asks in Of Peninsulas and Archipelagos, what does it mean for a region to be imagined not through origin but derivation, where continental solidity meets the fragmentary expanse of maritime archipelagos? Might we then understand SEA’s landscape of epistemic tension as a “translationscape”—a geography constituted by acts of translation and one which, in Vicente Rafael’s terms, unfolds through the traversal of spaces marked by indeterminacy? How might we rethink SEA not simply as a place translated, but as a translational force in its own right?
This seminar welcomes proposals exploring translation and conceptual forms of multilingualism in, from, and of SEA, conceived as both artistic and strategic practice. We are especially interested in the reimagination, or striking undertranslation, of SEA in global literary circulation. Areas of interest include: the translation of indigenous literatures and religious scriptures into dominant Southeast Asian languages; the disjunction between premodern and non-Westphalian formations—such as the mandala polity, the Malay world, or Arabic and Chinese contact zones—and the modern boundaries that overwrite them; and the role of translation, transculturation, and transterritorialization in reckoning with (post)colonial histories and mediating emergent notions of regional solidarity.
We also invite interdisciplinary approaches to translation across languages, media, and modalities, spanning orality, visual storytelling, and intermedial expression—from James Scott’s Zomia to Karen oral traditions, from Kuo Pao Kun’s quadrilingual theatre to wayang kulit and diasporic SEA performance and dance. Ultimately, this seminar explores how Southeast Asian imaginaries emerge at the intersection of multilingualism and the asymmetrical dynamics of inter-imperiality, signaling new directions beyond national or colonial territorialization and toward a polyphonic, multidirectional vision of SEA in motion across scripts, tongues, bodies, and screens.