Zrinka Stahuljak

Minor Empires: Translation, Conflict, and Postcolonial Critique

Abstract The current focus in translation studies on interpreting and translation in various situations of conflict calls into question the specific relevance of the postcolonial critique as applied to translation. Although postcolonial critique has been, and continues to be, crucial and productive for translation studies, the proliferation of conflicts of a non-colonial nature and their mediatization in the global context call into question the predominant reliance on the postcolonial framework of colonizer-colonized, colonial hegemony, center-periphery, metropole-colony, and hybridity. This article uses the theoretical concept of (minor) transnationalism to propose a composite model of analysis of conflicts and their translation, one that grounds itself in specific situations of power and responds to a variety of post-imperial situations. The aim is to show that the concept of ‘empire’ that has been at the foundation of postcolonial critique cannot respond to all situations of conflict; however, translation studies scholars can mobilize their analyses of violent conflict to elucidate and elaborate a plural concept of empire.

An epistemology of tension

Abstract ‘Epistemology of Tension’ is a comparative study of the use of the metaphor of ‘translation’ in the Middle Ages and in contemporary culture. Due to its metaphorical application, the contemporary term ‘translation’ has become a wide-ranging and central term extending well beyond its meaning of linguistic translation. However, I argue that, while the metaphors of translation connote translatability of historical, cultural, and political contents and contexts, at the same time they obscure the relations of power that take place in cultural and political translation. I draw a parallel with the medieval translation topos, where, although similar to contemporary translation in its range and centrality of position, translation addresses the issue of metaphor quite differently. An analysis of the medieval term ‘translatio’ in its meaning of metaphor reveals that translation occurs as an epistemology of tension between power and knowledge. By contrast, the metaphorization of translation in contemporary global culture creates a dominant, global language which presents itself as neutral because all-inclusive. Subsequently, I argue that because it is presumably all-inclusive, this global language of ‘translation’ threatens to become a homogenous and, ultimately, a hegemonic, undemocratic global discourse.

Neutrality Affects: Froissart and the Practice of Historiographic Authorship

Jean Froissart’s Chroniques narrate the history, from 1326 to 1400, of the origins and the first half of the HundredYears’ War between the kingdom of France and England (1337–1453), in which the ruling Valois and Plantagenet dynasties disputed their respective hereditary rights to the French royal throne. Throughout book IV, the last book of the Chroniques, Froissart reports the efforts of the French king Charles VI to persuade the neighboring kingdoms and domains to “se tourner neutre” [to become neutral], in order to resolve the papal schism which was to divide the Catholic Church from 1378 to 1449. In the very last episode which concludes the narrative of the Chroniques, the citizens of the powerful city of Liege finally align themselves with the French king and adopt the position of neutrality, thereby disavowing their alliance to the Roman pope Boniface IX. In response, Boniface sends a papal legate from Rome, who himself sends a messenger from Cologne carrying papal letters in an attempt to dissuade the citizens of Liege. But they respond to the messenger: “Ne retourne plus pour tels choses sur le peyne d’estre noye; car autant de messages qui vendront icy pour telle matiere, certes nous les jetterons en Mouse” (XVI, 240) [Do not return any more for these affairs under the penalty of drowning; as many messengers who will come here for this matter, certainly we will throw them into the river Meuse].1