The dis/locat/ing migrant as an agent of transposition: Borensztein’sUn cuento chinoand Segre’sIo sono Li

Abstract

Extending the conventional understanding of polyglotism, this article explores multiple polyglossic interactions, both intra-and extradiegetic, in two films that foreground the language and culture of the Chinese migrant, Un cuento chino/Chinese Takeaway (2011) directed by Sebastián Borensztein (Argentina) and Io sono Li/Shun Li and the Poet (2011) directed by Andrea Segre (Italy.) Both films feature dislocated Chinese immigrants who, throughout the films, speak in their native languages. In both cultural contexts Chineseness represents diametrical otherness that is difficult, if not impossible, to comprehend. Both films require their primary audiences to engage with significant quantities of spoken Chinese in order to develop a meaningful comprehension of sympathetic Chinese characters. We argue that, in contrasting ways, the films' mechanisms of polyglotism break the dominance of a singular cultural/linguistic discourse. Using Rosi Braidotti's (2006) notion of transposition, we argue that polyglotism is able to explore a nomadic vision of subjectivity whereby multiple, mobile subject positions offer modes of resistance to traditional habits of thought and representation. Understood in the context of diaspora space, a point of confluence and intersectionality, transposition enables a zigzagging and crossing, which enacts a creative leap that takes the form of a change of culture both in terms of how we think about the world and of how we inhabit it.

Activist sinology and accented documentary: China on the (Italian?) internet

“…The ripple effects of this documentary include a direct connection with Andrea Segre, one of the founders of Fuorirotta . Segre is the director of Io sono Li ( Shun Li and the Poet), which has also attracted considerable scholarly attention (Bertozzi 2014, Chung and Luciano 2014, Snaidero 2016). This oblique link between the relatively unknown small-screen documentary Mingong and the multi-award-winning silver screen feature film Io sono Li , can also easily become a direct hyperlink not only to this film and Segre's work, but also to similar – albeit not necessarily China-focused – critical explorations of hybrid identities, isolation and longing for Heimat , in urban contexts shaped by migration, mobility and dislocation.…”