0924 CULTURAL OBJECT

I have been thinking of language as one of the most obvious yet most invisible structures of culture. It decides which concepts can be easily expressed and which ones stumble in the awkward gap between tongues. Speaking both English and Mandarin, I constantly notice how certain nuances resist translation, how the texture of an idea mutates when carried across linguistic borders. I have been reading the Chinese Constitution 宪法 for another project, and I keep returning to this term. In English, we say “Constitution.” The word comes from the Latin "constituere", meaning to “establish, set up, arrange.” It implies an act of founding, of bringing something into being through assembly. To constitute is to give form, to shape a body out of fragments. So when we call it the Constitution, the emphasis is on the process of formation, which is the act of giving structure to governance, to law, to the nation itself. The United States Constitution, for example, is celebrated as a founding document, a piece of paper that somehow constituted the republic into being. The linguistic root reflects a cultural imagination of politics, the idea that a nation is something you can build from the ground up, brick by brick, clause by clause. But 宪法 is something else. 宪 (xiàn) historically meant “law, statute,” but it also connotes “model” or “standard,” something exemplary to be followed. In ancient usage, 宪 carried the sense of a guiding principle or a precedent set by authority. 法 (fǎ) is law, but more broadly it means method, regulation, the way things are ordered. Together, 宪法 doesn’t emphasize founding or constituting, instead it suggests “fundamental law,” the exemplary framework from which all other laws derive. It’s not about constituting something into existence, but about aligning governance with a higher model or a standard of authority.

This linguistic divergence makes me think how language does not just describe politics but embodies its culture. It made me realize that translation is never neutral, these words carry centuries of legal philosophy and cultural practice. Sometimes I find myself thinking that certain concepts “exist” more naturally in one language than another. For example, the English word “rights” translates into 权利 (quánlì). 权 means power or authority; 利 means benefit. Rights, then, are not framed as inherent entitlements but as authorized powers that produce benefit. Again, the subtlety matters. What English frames as natural and inalienable, Mandarin frames as relational and conditional.

So then this is how I would imagine culture circulates. It moves through translation, comparison and exchange. But circulation is never seamless. Each transfer leaves a trace, creating a shift in tone or exposing a subtle distortion. Culture is immobilized when those shifting meanings are pinned down, when an authority insists on a single “correct” version, whether in law, in an official translation or whatnot, that smooths over tension by declaring two words equal when they are not. Immobilization could be a form of preservation as well as containment. Just as a museum display isolates an artifact from its context, freezing it into an object of contemplation, legal codes and glossaries isolate words from the mess of lived speech, fixing them in a frame that denies their multiplicity. And yet, immobilization is never absolute. Language does not sit still. Even within its frozen form there still exists its forgotten connotations with political undercurrents waiting to be reactivated. So in a way, culture (or the idea of language) is "living" in this tension between circulation and immobilization, between the fluidity of use and the rigidity of the archive.