Introduction

The Introduction critically examines the ways in which “translational politics” work as a viable conceptual framework for the interrogation of race, gender, and sexuality in Southeast Asian literatures through the works of selected countries. The volume’s focus on the politicisation of ideas and meanings involved in the discursive translations of words, images, representations, and texts brings to the fore the hidden matrices of power and entrenched imbalances and biases that underline the act and process of translation itself, especially when they involve the contested categories of race, gender, and sexuality. The term “translational politics” is defined in relation to key concepts of identity, language, and representation. The Introduction then ends with the discussion of the other chapters.