Between virtuosity and despair: formal experimentation in diaspora tales

Bertacco, Simona

doi:10.1080/17449855.2014.885911

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 6 publications

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“…Over several decades, ‘translation’ has progressively become a central concept for a variety of approaches across the humanities and the social sciences: from the classical understanding of anthropology as a process of ‘cultural translation’ (Pálsson, 1993: 1–2; Sturge, 2007: 5–6) to the contemporary emergence of ‘knowledge translation’ as a key element in medical humanities (Holm et al, 2015: 86–87), ‘translation’ appears and reappears in sociology (Bielsa, 2022; Callon, 1986), philosophy (Serres, 1974), politics (Butler, 2000; Negri and Hardt, 2009, 2017; Rancière, 2008), communication studies (Conway, 2020), and literary theory (Bertacco, 2014: 146), among others. This process has been so widespread and intense that authors such as Bachmann-Medick (2009) have argued that many disciplines are experiencing a ‘translational turn’.…”

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confidence: 99%

‘Expanded translation’ and the construction of meaning: A case study from political activism

Fernández

2023

Social Science Information

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Echoing the classical debate on the nature of anthropology as a process of cultural translation, Lydia Liu has claimed that ‘strictly speaking, comparative scholarship that aims to cross cultures can do nothing but translate’. From this perspective, therefore, for an academic working across cultures, research becomes similar to an act of translation. How relevant is this for a contemporary understanding of research within the humanities and the social sciences, but also for social activity at large? Reflecting on the writing process for my recent monograph Translating the Crisis. Politics and Culture in Spain after the 15M (2020), this article will advance the concept of ‘expanded translation’ and its potential usefulness for a more nuanced and complex approach to these issues. By ‘expanded translation’, I understand a process of meaning formation that decisively involves translation but is not limited to it. As the article claims, it has become increasingly unfeasible to chart the circulation of a concept, an idea, or an author exclusively through a predefined set of translated texts in the traditional sense. As such, the construction of meaning and the use of translated concepts, authors, and models implies a collective process, which is non-centralized (multiple agents can join it without previous requirements) yet also unequal (as certain agents enjoy more power and visibility than others). Furthermore, these processes are not only limited to textual exchanges, but do also frequently involve a performative component, as new concepts and ideas are put into practice, which in turn influences their meaning. This process will be exemplified in the article through a sustained reflection on how the concept of the ‘commons’ has been adopted, modified, and used in Spanish politics after the 15-M or ‘indignados’ movement of 2011.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Expanded translation’ and the construction of meaning: A case study from political activism

Fernández

2023

Social Science Information

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Experimental Writing and Reading across Borders in Decolonizing Contexts

Brydon¹

2016

ariel

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Reading across epistemic borders in a globalizing world requires a revised understanding of how experimentation functions in decolonizing contexts by intervening to trouble the prevailing paradigms through which readers understand how meanings are made. Experimental fictions free the imagination to envision cognitive and social justice, which take different forms within different settings. By examining several texts written out of contexts of incomplete decolonization and ongoing imperialism in Canada, Australia, and the Caribbean, this paper shows how their various innovations navigate the problems of scale and generate new forms for representing cognitive justice in its many different potential manifestations, thus revealing the vitality of nonscalable worlds and the links between the scalable and the nonscalable. Wilson Harris' music of living landscapes is set in dialogue with Alexis Wright's fictions; Patrick White's artist as vivisector with Christian Bök's The Xenotext; Dionne Brand's quest for a cognitive schema beyond captivity with Wright's and Tomson Highway's turns to the space/time imaginaries of their people; and Shani Mootoo's small island world with Jamaica Kincaid's small place.

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Race at the Centre: The Ramifications of W. E. B. Du Bois’s Sociology in Contemporary Literary Studies

Chiorean

2021

transilvania

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Between virtuosity and despair: formal experimentation in diaspora tales

Cited by 3 publications

References 6 publications

‘Expanded translation’ and the construction of meaning: A case study from political activism

‘Expanded translation’ and the construction of meaning: A case study from political activism

Experimental Writing and Reading across Borders in Decolonizing Contexts

Race at the Centre: The Ramifications of W. E. B. Du Bois’s Sociology in Contemporary Literary Studies

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