Cultural Translation: Curricular Discourse with/in Internacionalization of Curriculum Studies

Abstract

This paper explicates theories of cultural translation as lenses to enrich discourses on the internationalization of curriculum studies. Mainly drawing from Judith Butler (2000), I theorize cultural translation as political engagement by challenging normalized meanings of curriculum, cultural difference, and national identity. In part, using self-reflexive autobiographical inquiry, I critically explore my engagement in the internationalization of curriculum studies and review assumptions embedded within my participation. Situating my participation with/in a necessary analysis of my birthplace, South Korea, I investigate the ways in which curriculum theorists create new vocabulary to include complicated meanings of culture, curriculum, and national identity that go beyond universalized notions of self/other, colonizer/colonized, and East/West. This task of cultural translation purports to pry open conversations about our daily struggles to consider whose knowledge, life, or curriculum is recognized as valuable and whose is not. Overall, this paper is meaningful to provide a curricular discourse to foster openness, fluidity, and mobility by working at the cultural and social limits of universal and universalized concepts of curriculum studies and its internationalization.