Concepts and Methods of Transcultural Imagology: Western Images of China as an Example

Abstract

The study of Western images of China in transcultural imagology unfolds across three levels: image, type, and prototype. While images in specific texts serve as the primary sources of analysis, focus is placed on the socio-historical process by which these images are programmed into overarching types, which function as the fundamental units for investigating the (re)production of Western images of China. Prototypes signify the inheritance and interrelation within lineages of images; they represent the basic, generally commensurable modes of understanding in the history of images—those that transcend individual texts and eras to remain embedded in the collective unconscious. The two primary modes of prototypes—utopianization and ideologization—provide the fundamental frameworks for interpreting the historical evolution of Western images of China. Transcultural imagology ultimately centers on these expressive and creative prototypes, analyzing the knowledge and power embedded in (images of) China as a discursive practice of Western modernity, as well as the discursive hegemony in transcultural interactions manifested within the modern world order. The prototypes of China as utopianized and ideologized images are linked to two forms of Orientalism; the tension between these two poles endows Western cultural expansion with its specific character. This is precisely the issue that warrants serious consideration in relation to the theme of Chinese cultural self-awareness.