This paper examines how “Bye Bye, Disco,” a 2022 live-streamed performance art installation by Chinese band singer Pang Kuan, who practiced self-quarantine on a 98-by-98-inch open platform at a gallery in Beijing, prompts a reconsideration of surveillance in the age of new media technologies. I first discuss how the presentation of everyday life itself can be considered as a reaction to surveillance in conversation with Kafka’s short story “A Hunger Artist.” Then, by comparing this work with performance pieces that did not integrate media technology, such as Marina Abramović’s The House with the Ocean View and Tehching Hsieh’s The Cage, I explore how the moral ambiguity of voyeurism in Pang’s work reflects a shift in surveillance from a top-down mechanism to a pervasive, everyday practice. Drawing on the analysis, an argument of the performer’s self-exposition in front of live-streaming cameras responds to this widespread surveillance by bringing privacy into public discourse. Finally, I consider the context of pandemic-era lockdowns, discussing how digital performance can function both as a means of expression for the masses and as a reinforcement of surveillance in daily life. By examining how new media technology shapes interactions between performer and audience, I argue that livestreaming technology enhances and amplifies this specific performance, enabling it to fulfill the dual function of art as both a form of expression and a medium, which helps to publicly showcase a situation that most people were experiencing during that period and giving a voice to what people want to say but cannot get across themselves.

Renowned for her thematic inquiries into the intersections of identity concerning race, gender and techno-science, the Chinese Canadian writer Larissa Lai demonstrates a profound commitment to social issues facing the entire humankind. This essay analyzes Lai’s novel Salt Fish Girl (2002) as a case of postmodernist fiction marked by a concern with the heist of “consumer society” and some transformative potential within the blighted reality. Focusing on the central motif, fish/fishiness, I propose that the symbol undergoes a process of mystification and demystification, precisely echoing the development of the “consumer society” under hyper-capitalism.

Through a semiotic lens, my thesis explores the significance of fish/fishiness in three stages of modern demystification. Firstly, I argue that the change of fish from a sacred sign to a global commodity epitomizes the gradual establishment of transnational capitalism and the consumer society. Secondly, I examine its realistic references to similar kinds of signs in the book, including the ethnic minority groups and cyborgs, demonstrating how the consumer society has transformed everything into signs. Finally, I argue that rather than criticizing the omnipresent consumerism, Lai takes a step further and unveils its potential and possibility to subvert entrenched notions of singular origin and hierarchical social structures predicated on genetic lineage. By presenting fish/fishiness as a mirror of capitalist progress, this interpretation contributes to a deeper understanding of Salt Fish Girl and aligns with the contemporary reflection on consumerism.

Following the popular tradition of the literary movement of sentimental novel in the eighteenth century, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-96) not only ignites a dispute between the advocates of antislavery and the supporters of proslavery by depicting a lively plantation setting but also makes burning tears of self-indulgence from the readers by the story of Uncle Tom globally. Hence, Uncle Tom’s Cabin became one of the best-selling books along with the Bible. However, many critics, including Charles Dickens and James Baldwin, were skeptical about representations of the brutal exploitation of the race. This anxiety about racial atrocity, human benevolence, and faith is undoubtedly Stowe’s contribution to the legacy of the novel of sentiment. This paper examines how Stowe’s sentimental tropes and rhetoric are translated and manipulated by Lin Shu (1852-1924) and his collaborator Wei Yi in their rewriting: A Record of the Black Slaves’ Plea to Heaven (黑奴籲天錄) (1901) in China. Both David Der-wei Wang and Michael Gibbs Hill indicate that the “rhetoric of weeping and lament” played a pivotal role in translation in the late Qing period when the Chinese suffered from the invasions of the various powers. As a translator who couldn’t speak any foreign languages, Lin Shu asked his collaborators to read the story so that he could undertake the task of translation. This procedure is completed repeatedly by “presence” and “disappearance” over and over again: Listen (to the voice of the Other) and translate (for construction of the national identity). This process of translating resonates with Jacques Derrida’s philosophical discussion about expression and communication in Speech and Phenomena, and the role of a translator is regarded as a “listener” in the light of Byung-chul Han’s response to Derrida in The Expulsion of the Other. With his collaborator, voice transforms a distant story into a corporeal experience in a translated work. Lin Shu listened to, felt, and manipulated the pain of poor blacks while he called for patriotic consciousness by translating Stowe's sentimental novel.

This paper explores the construction of female identity through the fetishism of the head and the theme of death in two late 19th-century plays, Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen and Salomé by Oscar Wilde. By comparing the two works, the paper examines how the female protagonists engage in extreme behaviors related to their bodies in an attempt to assert meaning, subjectivity, and self-affirmation. In Salomé, the protagonist's obsession with John the Baptist's severed head and her desire to kiss this object of death demonstrate her fixation on mortality. In Hedda Gabler, Hedda's targeting of the heads of her former lover and current rival with a gun and flame symbolizes her struggle for control and self-destruction. These women construct their identities through actions closely tied to memento mori—the reminder of death—demonstrating an extreme aesthetic of self-destruction as a means of confirming their existence. In this way, death ceases to be merely an end; it becomes a symbol of existence and meaning. The intersection of head fetishism and the death motif reflects the complex emotional landscape of the fin-de-siècle, revealing how women, situated between the constraints of traditional and modern worlds, resist or respond to external pressures through self-destructive acts.

This study evaluates the efficacy of ChatGPT-4, a large language model (LLM), in translating items from the Emirati dialect into English. Recognizing the unique linguistic and cultural features of the Emirati dialect, this research addresses a significant gap in machine translation (MT) resources for low-resource Arabic dialects. Using excerpts from Emirati short stories, the study employs both qualitative and quantitative analyses to assess translation accuracy, word choice appropriateness, linguistic naturalness, syntactic coherence, and clarity. Experts identified 39 lexical items from the Emirati dialect in three online short stories written by novice Emirati writers. The qualitative analysis evaluates the translation challenges posed by the dialect's semantic and cultural nuances and the solutions applied by ChatGPT-4. Additionally, four bilingual raters quantitatively assessed the translated items based on their contextual fit. Results indicate that ChatGPT-4 captures the nuances of the Emirati dialect, demonstrating promising potential as an automated translation tool. The findings underscore ChatGPT-4’s ability to bridge linguistic gaps, offering insights into the future of MT for dialects lacking comprehensive linguistic resources. This research contributes to the broader discourse on AI integration in translation, emphasizing the importance of critically engaging with emerging technologies in the field.