Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. The Enigmatic Signifier

2. The Shanghai Gesture

3. The Chinatown Syndrome

4. The Great Wall

5. The Lost Girls

Notes

Bibliography

Index

“Lost in Translation ... offers a broad historical guide to the changing politics and depictions of East Asia in Hollywood films and American culture more generally. It further offers readers a new range of psychoanalytic tools to help see where the traces of internal alterity are effaced and made manifest.” — David H. Fleming, Film-Philosophy

“Those engaged with questions of Asian and Asian American representation, and post-colonial theory more broadly, will find in Lost in Translation engaging meditations about difference and the way we respond to the ‘other’. Likewise, King’s text will resonate with readers seeking new formal interpretations of cinema, and particularly of mise-en-scène. One significant attribute of Lost in Translation is King’s philosophical inquiry about loss and mourning, but also conversely of pleasure, when we find ourselves confronted with the unknowability of otherness.” — Nina Seja, Media International Australia

“[T]he book is an interesting read. Moreover, it makes a vibrant contribution to the important area of film studies that attends to ways of reading the other within diverse cultural and cinematic frameworks and this is to be welcomed.” — Belinda Smaill, Screening the Past

“King's own arcade of analysis remains a formidable structure. With critical equanimity, she interweaves a variety of discourses—between psychoanalysis and phenomenology; film theory and cultural history; even classical Hollywood and experimental works—to undo the notion of their opposition and instead reveal their mutual investment. This book is a foundational work for future studies of not only the West's cultural interplay with East Asia, but broader concerns of alterity and the enigmatic in Hollywood itself.” — Ana Salzberg, Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature

“Lost in Translation ... offers a broad historical guide to the changing politics and depictions of East Asia in Hollywood films and American culture more generally. It further offers readers a new range of psychoanalytic tools to help see where the traces of internal alterity are effaced and made manifest.” —David H. Fleming, Film-Philosophy

“Those engaged with questions of Asian and Asian American representation, and post-colonial theory more broadly, will find in Lost in Translation engaging meditations about difference and the way we respond to the ‘other’. Likewise, King’s text will resonate with readers seeking new formal interpretations of cinema, and particularly of mise-en-scène. One significant attribute of Lost in Translation is King’s philosophical inquiry about loss and mourning, but also conversely of pleasure, when we find ourselves confronted with the unknowability of otherness.” —Nina Seja, Media International Australia

“[T]he book is an interesting read. Moreover, it makes a vibrant contribution to the important area of film studies that attends to ways of reading the other within diverse cultural and cinematic frameworks and this is to be welcomed.” —Belinda Smaill, Screening the Past

“King's own arcade of analysis remains a formidable structure. With critical equanimity, she interweaves a variety of discourses—between psychoanalysis and phenomenology; film theory and cultural history; even classical Hollywood and experimental works—to undo the notion of their opposition and instead reveal their mutual investment. This book is a foundational work for future studies of not only the West's cultural interplay with East Asia, but broader concerns of alterity and the enigmatic in Hollywood itself.” —Ana Salzberg, Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature

“The Orient is not just a cast of stereotypes but a visual world as well. With brilliance and gorgeous prose, Homay King uncovers the mise-en-scène of Orientalism and the cinema. She examines what is at stake when ‘Asia’ comes to stand in for an unintelligible alterity—an enigmatic signifier—that animates our psychic lives. Elegant and sophisticated, this tour de force sets a new standard for film theory, visual culture, psychoanalysis, and studies of race.” — David L. Eng, author of, The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy

“With Lost in Translation, her powerful analysis of Asia as an ‘enigmatic signifier’ for those who inhabit ‘the West,’ Homay King stages a compelling encounter between psychoanalytic theory, especially as reformulated in the texts of Jean Laplanche, and the politics of racial, national, and ethnic representation. Identifying East and West alike as sites of internal alterity, this smart, provocative, and persuasive book resists the familiar reductiveness of multiculturalist piety in order to insist on the ongoing work of finding ourselves, no less than our others, as always already in translation.” — Lee Edelman, author of, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive

Permission to Photocopy (coursepacks)

If you are requesting permission to photocopy material for classroom use, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at copyright.com;

If the Copyright Clearance Center cannot grant permission, you may request permission from our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

Permission to Reprint

If you are requesting permission to reprint DUP material (journal or book selection) in another book or in any other format, contact our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

Images/Art

Many images/art used in material copyrighted by Duke University Press are controlled, not by the Press, but by the owner of the image. Please check the credit line adjacent to the illustration, as well as the front and back matter of the book for a list of credits. You must obtain permission directly from the owner of the image. Occasionally, Duke University Press controls the rights to maps or other drawings. Please direct permission requests for these images to permissions@dukeupress.edu.
For book covers to accompany reviews, please contact the publicity department.

Subsidiary Rights/Foreign Translations

If you're interested in a Duke University Press book for subsidiary rights/translations, please contact permissions@dukeupress.edu. Include the book title/author, rights sought, and estimated print run.

Disability Requests

Instructions for requesting an electronic text on behalf of a student with disabilities are available here.

Rights & Permissions Contact Information

Email: permissions@dukeupress.edu

Email contact for coursepacks: asstpermissions@dukeupress.edu

Fax: 919-688-4574

Mail:
Duke University Press
Rights and Permissions
905 W. Main Street
Suite 18B
Durham, NC 27701

For all requests please include:

1. Author's name. If book has an editor that is different from the article author, include editor's name also.

2. Title of the journal article or book chapter and title of journal or title of book

3. Page numbers (if excerpting, provide specifics)

For coursepacks, please also note: The number of copies requested, the school and professor requesting

For reprints and subsidiary rights, please also note: Your volume title, publication date, publisher, print run, page count, rights sought