Appropriating Dewey

Abstract

The significance of the discovery of half of Dewey’s most important China lecture series notes, “Social and Political Philosophy,” cannot be overestimated. These newly-discovered lecture notes provide us with a unique opportunity to conduct a translation case study in both directions: first, to check Hu Shi’s translation against Dewey’s lecture notes; and second, to check John Dewey: Lectures in China, 1919-1920, “back translations” in the terminology of translation studies, both against Hu’s translation and against Dewey’s original notes that the back translators tried to reconstruct. More important, by treating translations as re-writes and as products of cultural and ideological manipulations, this case study enables us to analyze how Hu Shi appropriated Dewey’s ideas to advance his own cultural and political agenda while acting as the latter’s interpreter.