Translation, Postcolonialism and Cultural Studies

Résumé

Cet article s'inscrit dans la continuité des travaux de Gayatri Spivak et vise à prolonger la critique de cet auteur à l'encontre de l'insensibilité linguistique des cultural studies anglo-américaines.

Abstract

Despite the intensity of its current interest in postcoloniality, Anglo-American culture studies remains impenitently monolingual. Few cultural-studies theorists investigate the specifically linguistic question of postcolonial cultural transactions, preferring to treat 'translation' as a metaphor. At the same time, translation studies has been slow to assimilate the complexities of culture in the postcolonial world. This article tries to show how the linguistic sensitivities of translation studies are essential to cultural studies, while, inversely, sensitivity to questions of power in cultural translation is needed in translation studies. The work of Gayatri Spivak is mobilized to this end.