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Volume 4 (2011)
Call for papers
Translation
and Authenticity in a Global Setting
Dionysios
Kapsaskis and Lucile Desblache (Issue editors)
For centuries, the history
of translation in the West has been entangled with the
problematic of authenticity. On the one hand, in the
context of nationalism and colonialism, translation has
been used to promote mythologies of coherence, identity
and supremacy. On the other hand, the thinking of
translation, especially in the 20th century, led to the
critical interrogation of authenticity, homogeneity and
originality.
The ambivalent role of
translation in both establishing and destabilizing
notions of authenticity has also permeated Western
translation theory. Much of the theoretical discussion
on translation has revolved around the idea of
equivalence with the original text, thus perpetuating
metaphors of fidelity, treason and loss. More recently,
however, less essentialist approaches (e.g. cultural,
systemic, sociological) have been exploring the role of
translation in the construction of subjective or
collective identities (ethnic, literary, sexual and so
on.)
This ambivalence is perhaps
symptomatic of a field whose widespread practical
applications challenge the unity of its theoretical
implications. Never was this more the case than in the
present age of global interconnections. The map of
translation is today the map of global flows, encounters
and geopolitics. Going far beyond linguistic mediation,
and involving new realities of technology, mobility and
multimodality, translation is simultaneously a means of
global acculturation and a tool for local empowerment.
It lends audibility to "peripheries"
and "minorities"
at the same time as it helps consolidate various types
of "hegemony"
in politics, literature, the law, and elsewhere.
Arguably, then, translation continues to be enframed
within the conceptual enclosure of authenticity. Whether
it is to claim national or historical singularity for
specific communities or to rephrase all singularities in
terms of a global "home",
translation remains situated in the space between
uniqueness and universality.
This issue aims to reflect
on the critical function of translation in the current
globalized topology, with particular attention to issues
of authenticity and global/local identity. Articles are
invited on one or more of the following topics/questions
but need not be limited to them:
-
The politics of
translation: How is translation used today to
portray the migrant /peripheral/contingent in terms
of the domestic/central/universal and vice-versa?
-
The space of
translation: Does translation as practice or theory
create a space where the notion of authenticity can
be negotiated and perhaps transcended?
-
Forms of translation:
Beyond literary translation, do other forms of
translation, for instance interpreting in zones of
war, offer more scope to reflect on its critical
role today?
-
Translation and
globalisation: Is there a paradigm shift in the way
we understand translation today? Is translation a
paradigmatic discipline for the age of
globalisation?
-
Translation and
border-crossing: A metaphor for interdisciplinarity
in arts and the academe and/or a reality for
migrants and refugees?
-
(Un)translatability: Is
the current assumption that everything is
translatable? Is universal translatability
globalisation’s answer to a 20th-Century sense of
the ineffability of the singular?
Detailed proposals
(800-1000 words) for (6,000-7,000 word) articles as well
as any inquiries regarding this issue should be sent by
email to both Issue Editors: Dionysios Kapsaskis
(d.kapsaskis@roehampton.ac.uk) and
Lucile Desblache (l.desblache@roehampton.ac.uk).
Please send a short bio together with your proposal.
Deadlines
30 October
2010 submission of abstracts
30 December 2010 notification of
acceptance
30 July 2011 submission of
articles
Volume 5 (2012)
Call for papers
History and
Contemporary Literature
Christine Harrison and Angeliki Spiropoulou (Issue
editors)
The 'turn
to history', witnessed in both
literary studies and literature since the 1980s, has
ensued in part from new developments in the theory of
history itself, which have stressed the relevance of
literature for history and the affinity of
historiography with fictional narration, long suppressed
by historiography's
traditional empirical status and positivist claim to
truth (c.f. the groundbreaking work of Hayden White and
Paul Ricoeur, as well as that of Michel Foucault,
Stephen Greenblatt and Dominick LaCapra, for example).
The turn to history has, inversely, also derived from
an acknowledgement of the need to take into account the
historicity of the historiographical, literary and
critical acts. Fredric Jameson, for example,
contributed to the elaboration of a sophisticated notion
of historicity in the field of literary studies in the
early 80s, and at much the same time there
also appeared 'new historicist' and 'cultural
materialist' trends, inspired by diverse history-based
theoretical paradigms.
Simultaneously, and related
to the above developments, there has emerged a trend
within literature itself of evoking historical epochs,
personages and texts of the past, culminating in what
Linda Hutcheon has called with reference to fiction
'historiographical metafiction',
namely a set of texts which exhibits a concern with the
historical past and with issues of historiography while
retaining an acute language consciousness and a leaning
to formal experimentation. Even more recently, over the
past decade, both historicist models of criticism and
established theorizations of new historical literature
have been challenged for some of their presumptions.
However, historical literature, and especially fiction,
continues to dominate the literary production of the
twenty-first century in forms and for reasons that need
exploring as they may point to yet newer directions in
both literature and the conceptualization of the
relationship between history and literature.
We invite contributions that
engage with the modes in which contemporary fiction,
poetry and drama address, employ and revise history and
historiographical practices, and/or discuss new critical
trends and theoretical approaches to literature and
history. Possible topics include, but are not restricted
to:
-
New trends and subjects
of historiographical representation in contemporary
poetry, fiction, drama (e.g., gender and
topographical approaches; interrogations of
particular historical periods, methodologies and
mythologies; challenges to divides between the
literary/popular and private/public; contemporary
historical literature and realism, modernism,
postmodernism)
-
Revisions of literary
history, the literary canon and traditional literary
genres (e.g., the historical novel, historical
drama, gothic romance)
-
New directions in
historical literature and critical approaches since
2000
-
National/regional
contemporary historical literature
-
Re-writings of colonial
history and the history of the European periphery
(Balkan, Mediterranean) through literature
-
Memory, auto/biography,
visual material and contemporary literature
-
Historical fantasies and
utopias of the future
-
The past-present
dialogue in contemporary theory and literature
-
New challenges to recent
historicist models and critical taxonomies of
contemporary historical literature
Detailed proposals
(800-1,000 words) for articles of 6,000-
7,000 words, a short bio (up to 300 words) as well as
all inquiries regarding this issue, should be sent to
both guest editors: Christine Harrison at
chrisharrko@yahoo.co.uk and Angeliki
Spiropoulou at
aspirop@uop.gr.
Deadlines:
1 December 2010
submission of abstracts
1 February 2011 notification of acceptance
1 October 2011 submission of articles
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