Abstract/Summary

This chapter explores the problematique of translation in international politics. In the absence of a semiotic ‘master code’, knowledge about, and understanding of, the Other cannot be taken for granted. Drawing on Heidegger and Derrida, the following discussion deconstructs the modern episteme underlying Western notions of translation and excavates the political and cultural contexts in which the latter takes place. This ‘post-modern’ understanding of ‘translation without a master code’ is exemplified via a discussion of the way fashion operates as an epistemic paradigm. Focusing on a 2009 Chanel fashion show that appropriates Chinese sartorial signs, it demonstrates that the inability to know the ‘real’ China is the very condition for it to emerge in our imagination in a creative play of identity and différance.