Abstracts Category : Other

Afterlives: Benjamin, Derrida and Literature inTranslation

by Edmund William Chapman

This thesis argues that all literature is subjectto afterlife, a continual process of translation. From thisstarting point, this thesis seeks to answer two questions. Firstly,how texts demonstrate this continual translation; secondly, howtexts should be read if they are understood as constantly withintranslation. To answer these questions, this thesis seeks todevelop a model of textuality that holds afterlife as central, anda model of reading based on this concept of textuality. Chapter Oneexplores how following through the implications of WalterBenjamins and Jacques Derridas usages of the term afterlife intheir writings on translation, language and history necessarilyimplies a model of textuality. The model of reading that thisthesis seeks to develop focuses on language and history, asBenjamin and Derrida define these as the parameters within whichtranslation takes place. This study emphasises textuality itself asa third parameter. Chapter One also describes how, followingBenjamin and Derrida, language and history are conceived asinescapable, repressive systems. This, paradoxically, allows forthe concept of messianicity the idea that all language, andevery historical event, has the potential to herald an escape fromlanguage or history. By definition, because language and historyare all-encompassing, this potential cannot be enacted, and remainspotential. An innovation of this thesis is to understand textualityitself as having messianic potential; all texts have thepotential to escape textuality and afterlife, by reaching a pointwhere they could no longer be translated. Understanding texts ashaving messianic potential, but always being subject to afterlife,is the basis of the model of reading described at the end of thischapter. Due to the ways Benjamin and Derrida suggest we recognisemessianic potential, texts are read with a dual focus on theirsingularity and their connections to other texts. This is achievedthrough the text-in-afterlife, a concept this thesis developsthat understands texts as inextricable from the texts theytranslate and the texts that translate them. Chapters Two, Threeand Four test and complicate this model of reading in response totexts by James Joyce, Aim Csaire and Jorge Luis Borges. Conceptsof textuality and reading are therefore developed throughout thethesis. The three key texts are read with focus on their individualrelationships with language, history and textuality, and theirconnections to the texts they translate. Critics have linkedJoyces Ulysses to multiple other texts, making it seemexceptional. However, the concept of messianicity shows thatUlysses is important precisely because it is not exceptional.Csaires Une Tempte demonstrates how a text can interact withseveral translations of the same text simultaneously, and alsothat, although language and history are structured by colonialismand are inescapable, there is a huge potential for translationwithin these terms. Borges Pierre Menard, Autor del QuijoteAdvisors/Committee Members: SPENCER, ROBERT R, De Groot, Jerome, Spencer, Robert.