Staged Translation: How Peritextual Strategies Create a Fa&#x000e7;ade of Cultural Legitimacy in Christopher Markert&#x02019;s Book of Changes

Bjoern Aage C. Blix

doi:10.65961/jts-2026-1-002

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Journal of Translation Studies ›› 2026, Vol. 10 ›› Issue (1) : 22-50. DOI: 10.65961/jts-2026-1-002

Staged Translation: How Peritextual Strategies Create a Façade of Cultural Legitimacy in Christopher Markert’s Book of Changes

Bjoern Aage C. Blix

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Abstract

This article examines how Christopher Markert’s staged translation of the Book of Changes (1986) uses visual and verbal peritexts to construct a façade of cultural legitimacy. While Markert’s version presents ideological arguments against Western culture absent from established sinological scholarship, it makes several statements which suggest engagement with Chinese sources and incorporates an extensive array of Chinese visual features such as decontextualized Chinese characters and copies of traditional Chinese paintings on nearly every double-page spread. By drawing on Genette’s paratext theory, Peircean semiotics, and MacCannell’s staged authenticity, this study argues that these peritextual strategies do not function as meaningful textual references but as signifiers of “Chineseness” that simulate indexical connection to Chinese sources. Particularly, the article demonstrates how Markert’s systematic visual saturation creates a persuasive veneer of cultural legitimacy that enables what is effectively a staged translation to circulate internationally as a genuine representation of the Chinese classic. The findings reveal a paratextual strategy wherein cultural signifiers are deployed to authenticate a text, bypassing the sort of genuine indexical relationship to source materials that traditionally grounds translation as a practice. This case study contributes to translation studies by extending paratextual analysis beyond literary framing and introducing the concept of staged translation, demonstrating how visual elements especially can function as mechanisms of legitimation that perform the authority a text otherwise lacks.

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Book of Changes / staged translation / pseudo-translation / visual peritexts / Peircean semiotics

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Bjoern Aage C. Blix. Staged Translation: How Peritextual Strategies Create a Façade of Cultural Legitimacy in Christopher Markert’s Book of Changes.Journal of Translation Studies2026 , 10(1): 22-50. https://doi.org/10.65961/jts-2026-1-002

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