Turning the stranger into a migrant – towards a study of translation as a possible paradigm of postmodernity

Abstract

This paper starts from the turn of modernist discourse and epistemology to postmodernity. It seeks to highlight some central aspects of the proximity between postmodern philosophical thought and current hermeneutic translation theory, aiming to argue translation as a possible epistemé of postmodernity, where the static notions of the original or the authentic, the other or the foreign have already been replaced by more dynamic notions such as "text traductif" (Nouss) and migrant/migration. Based on the philosophical perspectives proposed by Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Welsch, and Nouss, it shall be argued that a) translation is exemplarily postmodern in its capacity to critically re-write history, ideologies, and systems, representing a dynamics that is both ethical and aesthetic, both universal and local, both psychological and sociological; and b) that paratranslation functions as its interrelated space of critical, meta-translational and transdiscursive thinking.