Cultural triangulation in Romanian travelogues to China under Communism
Cultural triangulation in Romanian travelogues to China under Communism

Summary/Abstract: This article highlights the heuristic usefulness of “cultural triangulation”, a concept attempting to exceed the dominant schemata for the analysis of intercultural relations in current comparative cultural studies, which are generally limited to binary mechanisms of the type (culture)A “sees”/constructs/influences/dominates (culture) B. In contrast to this reductionist tendency,I argue that all (inter)cultural processes have an ideologically filtered nature and consequently imply the mediation of the relationship between A and B via an intermediary C, to which various roles are assigned (e. g., to hide/alter/compensate/reverse various power relations, which are under no circumstances obvious or inevitable). My study explores the dynamics of this mechanism of cultural triangulation by analyzing some of the most representative travelogues to China written by Romanian authors during the communist era: G. Călinescu’s Am fost în China Nouă (I’ve Been to New China, 1955), Eugen Barbu’s Jurnal în China (Chinese Diary,1970), and Paul Anghel’s O clipă în China (One Moment in China, 1978).

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