Afterword: Translation and the Histories and Geographies of the Book

Abstract

To write an Afterword is to write a text that is both within the bound pages of the volume in which it appears, and outside its principal content. Paratextual and liminal, 2 therefore, an Afterword serves as a framing device that comes afterwards and is accordingly placed at the volume's end. As such, it is spatially and temporally distinct from what precedes it. It is back matter and therefore an optional extra -an afterthought -to the work already accomplished by the editors of and the contributors to this collection. My Afterword is by no means the last or final word in the sense that it would 'finish off, close or conclude' 3 a conversation on the intersections of translation and book history that promises many more after-words, among which these are merely preliminary. I want to use this space, granted to me so generously by the editors, to reflect more generally on the pathways these essays have collectively opened up.