The tidalectics of translation

Abstract

This chapter aims to contribute to debates on non-market-centric, more equitable, sustainable routes of transnational literary circulation, particularly for those literatures originally produced, translated, disseminated and distributed in fragilized ecosystems. To this end, it proposes an epistemological move away from traditional core-periphery, Global North-Global South paradigms. Rather than adopting a market-oriented approach, it aims to rethink Translation Studies from the perspective of the complex, varied and fragile ecosystems of the Caribbean. In relation to flows from and beyond the Caribbean, it will concentrate on Kamau Brathwaite’s ‘tidalectics’ (or ‘tidal dialectic[s]’) to envisage more sustainable flows of transnational literary circulation and rethink acts and processes of translation within their ‘natural’, vulnerable contexts of emergence (Brathwaite, 1983).