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- Convenors:
-
Nathalie Koenings
(Hampshire College)
Irene Brunotti (University of Leipzig)
Franziska Fay (Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Linguistic and visual (de)colonialisms
- Location:
- Room 1098
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 8 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
In this panel we ask: What can 'response-able' translation bring to the decolonization of relations with, to, and in 'Africa'? And how might the response-ability for decolonisation generate new meaning for the question of translation?
Long Abstract:
We explore translation as a response-able practice of decolonisation. Both translation and decolonisation are defined by the commitment "to respond, to be responsible and take responsibility for that which we inherit from the past and from the future" (Barad 2019). We ask: What can 'response-able' translation bring to the decolonization of relations with, to, and in 'Africa'? And how might response-ability for decolonisation generate new meaning for the question of translation?
This response-ability shapes decisions about which texts are rendered into other languages for other audiences. It defines our responses to existing 'texts', and which will be accessible for, and eventually inherited by, whom. For decolonisation, too, response-ability for stories of the past, in what languages, for whom, how, and why they are told, is essential.
Response-able translation and decolonisation are collaborative. They are relational projects of reflexive sense-making that (ideally) bring into conversation perspectives from across Africa and Europe. Response-able translation honours multiple onto-epistemologies. Like decolonisation, it attends to the violence inherent to all forms of representation, and diversifies socio-political debates.
Contributions might engage the following questions:
How can translation (word-based, visual, and other) contribute to decolonisation? What does honouring the materiality of wor(l)ds - their historicity, temporary, relational situatedness - and of translation itself require us to acknowledge and articulate? How may the idea of 'text' itself conceal the multiple objects of translation? How might questions of self-translatability and untranslatability be negotiated? How can we locate response-ability in our diverse relations, both within and outside of 'texts'?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 8 June, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
Paulina Chiziane’s Niketche (2002) and O Alegre Canto da Perdiz (2013) show how and to what extent women (and their corpo-realities) are affected by the phallogocentric conception of religion and the divinity, her feminine translation of Mozambican tradition aiming at gender decolonization.
Paper long abstract:
For a human community to last over time, the relations between its members are regulated by symbolic devices that not only structure hierarchies, but also create pedagogical, ethical and moral, political, and legal models – which in turn forge collective and individual identity (Bourdieu 2014). Among these tools, a special place belongs to religions. At a more superficial level, it is possible to assign them an educational function, being the crucible of behavioural codes and conventions reproduced in everyday community life (Boutchich 2016; Mafuassa 2018). A closer look highlights the phallogocentric skeleton that underlies the principles and discourses on which the cults are based. This means that we can recognise a predilection for the phallus, for the male element, in all processes of signification. As a result, not only does the dominant view give centrality to masculinity to the detriment of female images and representations, but also the biopolitics imposed by religion will be inscribed onto female bodies in a stigmatising way. Not only do Paulina Chiziane’s "Niketche" (2002) and "O Alegre Canto da Perdiz" (2013) show how and to what extent women (and women’s corpo-reality) are affected by this way of conceiving worship and the divinity. The author also constructs an onto-epistemological counterpoint to the predominant phallogocentrism in the religious sphere. In fact, she negotiates women's position/ality by carrying out a female / feminine translation of some fundamental aspects of the African / Mozambican tradition, her aim being gender decolonization.
Paper short abstract:
This paper takes a collaborative research project on collections from Namibia at the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin as a starting point to argue for postcolonial provenance research as a continual and decolonizing process of translation.
Paper long abstract:
In 2019, historians, curators, artists and cultural experts from Namibia visited the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin to study the museum’s Namibian collections. The goal was to confront and work through the colonial and often extremely violent contexts in which the objects had been taken and to openly discuss the future of the objects and their probable return to Namibia. It was an emotionally and intellectually intense process in which the German and Namibian research partners had to negotiate various ways of engaging with and caring for objects and to translate between different forms of knowledge about the past(s) and, consequently, the present(s) and possible futures. In this paper, I will take my role as provenance researcher and curator in the project as a starting point to reflect on these processes of transcultural and transmedial translation. Is it possible to translate the findings of research in colonial archives without perpetuating the racist and one-sided worldview inherent in the archival records? How can we create a space in which embodied and performative forms of knowledge can be expressed on equal terms and enter in dialogue with textual forms of knowledge? In this paper, I will discuss the strategies that we, in the Namibian-German team, developed to respond to our various forms of relating to pasts, presents and futures through things, to co-produce knowledge and, ultimately, to translate our collaborative research in the form of an experimental exhibition for a broader audience.
Paper short abstract:
Africa opens to globalization, seeking political awareness and greater respect; gains in linguistic competences open discourses to articulate the intellectual and political concerns of African communities. Translation should stay faithful to information conveyed while communicating it to readers.
Paper long abstract:
I will present my self-reflexive work and translational challenges I experienced while cataloging and converting archived documents, from the now-folded NGO Safe Blood for Africa (SFBA), into an open access database. I translated training and operations documents used by the Cameroon blood service (in partnership with SFBA) from Cameroonian French to English to prepare metadata and keywords for the searchable database. When identifying metadata in these documents I encountered terms that did not have direct translation with meaning that fit the context, and thus I made choices as to how I interpreted them. For example did use of French “politique” mean in English “policy,” “politics,” “approach,” or possibly “doctrine?” Relying on my own educational and cultural background I chose “policy.” Interpretive, but not arbitrary. These terms, however, are important for blood transfusion safety, and my role as translator was going to affect information needed by researchers and practitioners and thus directly impacts safety of people in which these protocols are applied to. My interpretive choices were influenced by my U.S. training in biochemistry, statistics, and public health. My positionality (as a French woman), in the global health work centered around the African context, provided insights into the interactions between translation, language, and the work of decolonization. It also challenged me to confront the limits of translation for decolonization within the context of blood services. This paper will aim to discuss how I negotiated honoring the words while working through my influences to perform response-able translation.