Comparative Cultural Studies and Translation Studies

Summary

Abstract: In his article “Comparative Cultural Studies and Translation Studies” Paolo Bartoloni discusses the interstitial space of translation by drawing on literary and philosophical preoccupations, especially Giorgio Agamben's notion of “potentiality.” Bartoloni proposes that the defintion and discussion of “potentiality” and the significance it represents ought to pass through a rethinking of translation studies, and asks what would happen if the focus of translation shifts from the final product—or from the relation between the source text and the translation—to the process of translating where distinct languages and cultures meet without superimposing own values onto the other. Bartoloni postulates that this process achieves relevance when located within a cultural dialogue from which a new reflection on translation, as well as literature and subjectivity can commence.

Introduction

Interpreting Aristotle's Book Theta of the Metaphysics, Giorgio Agamben remarks that “in its originary structure, dynamis, potentiality, maintains itself in relation to its own privation, its own steresis, its own non-Being. This relation constitutes the essence of potentiality. To be potential means: to be one's own lack, to be in relation to one's own incapacity. Beings that exist in the mode of potentiality are capable of their own impotentiality; and only in this way do they become potential. They can be because they are in relation to their own non-Being. In potentiality, sensation is in relation to anesthesia, knowledge to ignorance, vision to darkness” (Potentialities 182; further on Agamben and translation, see Bartoloni).