Aporias of Translation

For proposal stage:

1. Introduction: Aporias of Translation

The three main fields of study, education, literature, and philosophy, are introduced in relation to the notion aporias of translation. A brief history of each of the two basic concepts of the book, aporia and translation, is given. These histories provide the reader with the relevant previous research on the two concepts, and also stake out the paths that the studies in the book will follow in relation to aporias of translation. The introduction, moreover, outlines the way aporias of translation as a practice relates to education and pedagogy. Relevant research on education is addressed and accounted for. Important secondary literature on the main themes and fields of study is described and related to the argument of the book. The introduction concludes with short summaries of the seven chapters (including the Coda) which make up the main studies in the book.


2. The Education of Death

The chapter consists of an analysis of what the notion of an education of death, as suggested in Thomas Bernhard''s novel Gargoyles (Verstörung), might entail. The primary texts of the chapter are, besides Bernhard''s novel, a passage from Hegel''s Phenomenology of Spirit (Phänomenologie des Geistes), and Jacques Derrida''s Aporias (Apories). The translations of the primary texts are addressed and problematized, in order to highlight the aporetic character of translation, and how the aporias of translation, further, relates to an education of death. Specifically, when it comes to the notion of aporia, the chapter provides an analysis of Derrida''s thinking concerning aporia and death, which have a direct bearing on the notion of an education of death. The chapter concludes with a return to Bernhard''s Gargoyles in light of the previous analysis of the education of death, and suggests that a possible education of death points beyond the instrumentalism of formal education toward a notion of experience and Bildung developed through the confrontation with death and aporia.



3. Translation and Aporia in Censorship, Critique, and Education

The main texts of this chapter are the censored chapter "At Tikhon" in Dostoevsky''s novel Demons, Derrida''s chapter "Vacant Chair: Censorship, Mastery, Magisteriality" in Eyes of the University: Rights to Philosophy 2, and Rodolph Gasché''s book The Honor of Thinking: Critique, Theory, Philosophy, especially the chapter on Heidegger''s notion of Auseinandersetzung ("Toward an Ethics of Auseinandersetzung"). These three textual encounters set the stage for rethinking ethics in relation to education, critique, and censorship. The chapter begins with a reading of "At Tikhon," and the correlation between the Dostoevsky and his protagonist in Demons, Stavrogin, concerning censorship. The reading also broaches the relationship between education and censorship, more precisely a certain pedagogical movement discernable in Tikhon''s treatment of Stavrogin, which borders on censorship. The chapter continues with an analysis of Derrida''s deconstruction of censorship in Kant. As Derrida notes in "Vacant Chair," censorship is not limited to state sanctioned intellectual violence (Gewalt) as Kant would have it, but applies to any act to limit free expression. The chapter concludes by proposing an alternative way of doing critique which tries to address the inevitable censorship of any critique, but in a manner that poses an ethical alternative in the form of Heidegger''s notion of Auseinadersetzung, proposed by Rodolph Gasché. In sum, the chapter poses the question if not translation, in fact, is a form of censorship. How, for example, can we come to terms with the gaps and omissions in the English translation of Demons? These absences, it is argued, are