Vertiefungsseminar Postcolonial Fiction Migration and Cultural Translation Mi 10:30-12:00

March 1, 2016: Please note that this seminar is already oversubscribed. Students subscribing from today will be included in a waiting list. -For a translation will always come after, it will always be belated, in its own time but, in a sense, also out of time, out of place. Gone, lost, missing from its place, wandered off. Intrusive, elsewhere. An intruder. Refugee. Wanderer, nomad, migrant, vagabond, bandit guerrilla.” (Young 2006: 29) In the 21st century, the English language is of global importance. It is the international language of the economic world market, and the universal language of communication in art and culture. Translation is the tool which enables the accessibility of writings to people all over the world. In its traditional meaning, -[t]ranslation is an act that involves the transfer of texts written in one language into another. The Latin root of the English word ‘translation’ implies relocation, translatus being the past participle of the verb transferre, ‘to carry across’. [...] Translation is a kind of textual journey from one context into another.” (Bassnett 2014, 78) Moving away from this explicit linguistic concept of translation as the transfer texts across boundaries of language, from source language to target language, and abandoning the -traditional Western view of the translator as the servant of the original and the idea of the translation as an inferior copy of that original” (Bassnett 2014, 80), this seminar will focus on the figurative meaning of the term translation, -as a site of exchange, a hybrid space charged with multiple meanings.” (Bassnett 2014, 94). In the context of the transcultural contact zone of postcolonial literature dealing with migration and dislocation, we will explore the process of cultural translation as an instrument of cultural exchange rather than a means of assimilation, giving rise to new interconnections and transformations. The term -cultural translation”, defined by Homi Bhabha in his essay -How Newness Enters the World”, relates to the new global phenomenon of migrant writing, writing that moves across borders and boundaries, and highlights in-betweenness of translation. Understanding the term ‘migration’ both literally, as the movement of characters across geographic and political boundaries, and figuratively, as the travelling of texts across cultural and linguistic borders, we will investigate novels which incorporate aspects of postcolonial rewriting, intertextuality, movement and migration. These hybrid, transnational texts answer to a plurality of discourses and thereby lead to textual transformations and cultural interchange, and they promote an affirmative vision of translation with its refusal to insist upon the definitive authority of any text. Starting off from the crucial role played by language in the whole colonial enterprise, we will base our readings of three novels and some poems on several theories about (cultural) translation, as well as on postcolonial theories such as Orientalism an Mimicry, as well as Rebecca Walkowitz’s notion of the -born translated novel” (Walkowitz 2015). But instead of contrasting the supposed superiority of the original with the inferiority of the translation, we will explore aspects of intercultural exchange, creative and innovative crossings between cultures, thus highlighting the transformative potential of translation. Primary Literature (in order of being read in class): Jean Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea. Penguin Student Editions, 2001. Caryl Phillips: The Nature of Blood. Vintage, 2008. J.M. Coetzee: The Childhood of Jesus. Vintage, 2014. (these editions, if possible) Secondary Literature: Bassnett, Susan: -Postcolonial Translations.” In: Shirley Chew and David Richards (eds.). A Concise Companion to Postcolonial Literature. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell 2014, 78-96. Bhabha, Homi K. -How Newness Enters the World: Postmodern Space, Postcolonial Time and the Trials of Cultural Translation.” In: Homi K. Bhabha. The Location Of Culture. London, England: Routledge, 1994, 303-337. Conway, Kyle. -Cultural Translation.- In: Yves Gambier and Luc van Dorslaer (eds.). Handbook of Translation Studies, Volume 3. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Benjamins, 2012. 21-25. Gentzler, Edwin. -Translation, Poststructuralism and Power.” In: Maria Tymoczko and Edwin Gentzler (eds). Translation and Power. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press 2002, 195-218. Trivedi, Harish. -Translating Culture Vs. Cultural Translation.- In: Paul St-Pierre and P.C. Kar (eds.).Translation: Reflections, Refractions, Transformations. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Benjamins, 2007, 277-287. Walkowitz, Rebecca L. Born Translated: The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature. New York: Columbia University Press 2015. Young, Robert. -Writing Back, in Translation.” In: Raoul J Granqvist. (ed.). Writing Back in/and Translation. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang 2006, 19-38. Anglistik V - Anglophone Literaturen/Literaturübersetzen Universität Düsseldorf SoSe 2016 Lumpe Laura