本文以馬君武(1881-1940)在1902年所翻譯的<斯賓塞女權篇>為例，試圖勾繪這個翻譯過程中，透過原本已經不平等的二種語言之間的移動與轉換，所折射出的帝國主義、國族主義的殖民認同與 (或 ) 反抗，與這個認同 / 反抗中，擺盪在性別、國族之間的複雜權力結構與交織作用；以及原文和譯文涉及女權論述時，在二種權力不平等的男性語言使用者之間，交雜或偷渡的各種性別與殖民認同與慾望關係。同時也採討「文明進步的現代化國家」的認同、慾望、規劃、想像，與「翻譯」以及「女權」之間的關係。並藉此討論「中國的女權」這個歷史敘事，在世紀初這個歷史時刻的形構。目前所謂「中國女性主義」的再現，如果放在國家的架構內時，有一個「男性」的源頭 (即：中國的女性主義，來自中國男性知識分子的倡導 )，而放在帝國主義殖民架構時，則又有一個「西方」的源頭 (即：中國的女性主義，來自西方的女性主義 )。也就是說，如果要建構所間「中國女性主義」的歷史，那麼，不論是問問題的方式，或者是提出的答案，都難免與「外來」糾纏不清，不論這個「外來」是「女性」的對立面「男性」，或是「中國」的對立面「西方」。因為問題的本身就來自這個「本土 -- 外來」、「中國 -- 西方」、「女 -- 男」的權力架構，而這個架構的本身，早已經是權力不對稱的產物。 本文試圖在糾纏中脫逃「中國 -- 西方」或「東方--西方」這個二元陷阱， 由世紀之交現代化過程中，中國 / 帝國「翻譯」的慾望，來討論這個具有歷史性的問題。

　　　　　This paper analyzes Ma Jun-wu's (1881-1940) 1902 translation of Herbert Spencer's "The Rights of Women." It demonstrates the importance of the translation of the universalizing discourse of "The Rights of Women" to early 20 century nationalist intellectuals in their discursive construction of a Chinese postcolonial modernity. I investigate the layered postcolonial politics of translation involved as early 20th century intellectuals used the translation of a western, male-authored rights-based feminist discourse to invent a language that could articulate claims to a Chinese modernity. I attempt to delineate those places and moments in the translated texts, where imperial, national and colonial identifications and desires are refracted through already unequal displacements and movements between two languages. I note the interweaving and complex power structurations that transpire between gender and ethnic nationalism, and in particular how a discourse on the rights of women, when travelling between male writing positionalities of differential (national, ethnic) power, will easily transport various problematic gender and colonial identity relations. We can discern this complexity through Ma's translation, for example, of the English words such as "we,""us," and "our own," as appeared in Spencer's original articles, into "fan-shih jen-lei, " ("all human beings") or even "Wuo-kuo" ("our nation") in Chinese. Such renderings of English philosophical writings surely arise from a historical moment when imperialism and colonization posed an imminent threat to "our nation." The implications of such theory-travel or translations must be re-examined in historical terms. Recent work in postcolonial studies has provided a viable framework for the rethinking of the problem of language and translation. In order to gain an analytic understanding of topics such as the politics of translation and the representation of "Chinese Feminism, "or the effects of reflection and refraction in the act of reading, we will re-examine the imperial disires in which the project of nation building and the search for belated) modernization eventually become the ideological consensus in China during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.