Politics of Untranslatability: Bengali Poetry as Literature of the World

Britain’s leading centre for the study and support of literary translation.

British Centre for Literary Translation

Emily Apter rightly argues, quoting Derrida, that the history of translation cannot be delinked from the “history of proselytism and forced conversion” (<a href="https://press.ici-berlin.org/doi/10.37050/ci-19/apter_afterword.html" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Apter 2021</a>, 223), a world-system in which “Globish (Global standard English)” is imposed on us as our “absolute habitat” (Derrida 1998), conferring on it its undisputed monolingual sovereignty. Is translation a hegemonic exercise that silences, glosses over multiple non-English specificities or the “untranslatables” (Cassin 2014; Attridge 2021)? How can translation meet the challenges of “incommensurability, nonequivalence, the history of violent erasure, … and nonwords, or the effects of non-translation” (<a href="https://press.ici-berlin.org/doi/10.37050/ci-19/apter_afterword.html" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Apter 2021</a>, 219)? Is translation akin to Lyotard’s idea of the “differend”, a conflict zone, left unsettled, unanswered? Is translation, therefore, “a facilitator of Globish (a tool of monolingualism)” (<a href="https://press.ici-berlin.org/doi/10.37050/ci-19/apter_afterword.html" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Apter 2021</a>, 221)? How do we strategize a renegade translation heuristic when we trans-iterate minor or micro-literary texts? How can “mistranslation”, “nontranslation”, or a “resistant model of translation” weaponize against the world-systems of literary translation? How do we translate the untranslatable? Or how “to philosophize in translation”, making it a deconstructive tool? This seminar will situate all these questions within the context of translating modern Bengali poetry, or Kallol era poetry to be more precise. Kallol poets were brilliant literary interlocutors of the world, being Bengali avant garde practitioners; they wrote during the inter-war period, a time strikingly similar to our current conjuncture of human conflict and the rise of neo-fascist authoritarianism.Around the virtual table to discuss these issues will be Emily Apter (New York University), Supriya Chaudhuri (Jadavpur University), Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha (Kazi Nazrul University / University of East Anglia) and Liesl Schwabe (Yeshiva University).

Our {communityGuidelinesLink} describe the sort of content we prohibit on Eventbrite. If you suspect an event may be in violation, you can report it to us so we can investigate.

To report other categories of prohibited or illegal content, submit {link}

Politics of Untranslatability: Bengali Poetry as Literature of the World

More events from British Centre for Literary Translation

Follow organisers to get events picked for you

Still looking for the right event?

Explore all online events to browse and filter by date, category, and more.

Politics of Untranslatability: Bengali Poetry as Literature of the World

More events from British Centre for Literary Translation

Follow organisers to get events picked for you

You might also like...

Browse more events with different dates, prices, and formats to find your next great experience.

Still looking for the right event?

Explore all online events to browse and filter by date, category, and more.