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A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick Permanent WRAP URL: http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/102820/ Copyright and reuse: This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. For more information, please contact the WRAP Team at: [email protected] warwick.ac.uk/lib-publications THE CARIBBEAN IN TRANSLATION: REMAPPING THRESHOLDS OF DISLOCATION Laëtitia Saint - Loubert Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of PhD University of Warwick Yesu Persaud Centre for Caribbean Studies November 2017 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: Genette’s thresholds at a crossroads 1 1. Relocating Caribbean thresholds in translation 12 1.1. Liminality in translation: bordering on criminality? 12 1.2. Caribbean thresholds: enclaves of cultural resistance 20 1.3. The Caribbean in translation: walking da tide - rope of in - betweenness 29 2. Authenticating the Caribbean: thresholds of (re)appropriations and (dis)locations 39 2.1. Pre/postfacing or the art of endorsing Caribbean literature in translation 39 2.1.1. (Re)creating pan - Caribbean filiations 42 2.1.2. Labours of love on the limens of ‘tra nsformance’ 46 2.2. Thresholds of opaque revelations 54 2.2.1. Caribbean authenticity or the ‘unsheathing of the tongue’ 56 2.2.2. New rites/rights of passage for Caribbean untranslatabilities 61 3. The trial of the border: from inhospitable thresholds to liminal reciprocities 67 3.1. Tongue - t(w)esters: the case of Hispaniola 70 3.1.1. Translation and Shibboleth 70 3.1.2. Translation, Unheimlichkeit , and the creation of a ‘syncopate temporality’ 76 3.1.3. Transl ational sites of re - covery 81 3.2. Re - mapping Caribbean hybridities in translational suture s 85 3.2.1. Translation as ‘unhoming’ 85 3.2.2. Towards thresholds of reciprocal hospitality? 91 4. ( Re ) translating Césaire’s Cahier : towards a decolonisation of paratextual practices? 98 4.1. Palimpsestic thresholds of translation: (re)siting original displacements 103 4.1.1. On the h istoricity of creation and (re)translation 104 4.1.2. Translational thresholds: chronotopes of retractation? 108 4.1.3. From ‘traduttore /traditore’ to ‘traduzione/tradizione’ 113 4.2. Translation of the Cahier as a (re)enactment of ‘digenèse’ 116 4.2.1. Debunking the myth of original unity 118 4.2.2. Transposing the beats of Césaire’s maroon rhythms 122 4.3. (Re)translating Césaire: from rec ou peration to reparation 127 4.3.1. Restoring Caribbean kinships: re - prefacing Césaire 128 4.3.2. Aimé Césaire and Wifredo Lam: ‘Ils se sont [ re ] trouvés’ 133 4.3.3. Decolonising exegesis through a translational approach to texts 136 5. Caribbean self - translations: relocating thresholds of (self ) legitimation and transculturation 142 5.1. (Auto)ethnographies of the Caribbean self 144 5.1.1. The (split) self on display 145 5.1.2. Breaking the ‘autobiographical pact’ through (self - ) translation? 149 5.1.3. Thresholds of self - legitimacy 154 5.2. Trans - fusions of the Puerto Rican bifocal self 158 5.2.1. Exposing contamination 158 5.2.2. (Self - ) translation and/as transculturation 162 5.3. (Self - ) translation as a Caribbean condition? 167 5.3.1. Complicating genealogies and geographies of the Caribbean (translated) self 169 5.3.2. Cultural (self - ) translation vs . non - translation? 173 6. Sub - liminal correspondences: transoceanic creolizations in the making 178 6.1. Transcolonial experiences of indentureship 179 6.1.1. Translational crossings of the kala pani 180 6.1.2. Translating ‘ coolitude ’ across the Atlantic 184 6.2. Of moorings and ‘amarres’ between islands and continents 188 6.2.1. Echoing the tidalectics of sound in translation 189 6.2.2. Submarine unity or sub - unities? 195 6.2.3. Selective moorings: mapping local resistance to master narratives 201 7. Towards a Caribbeanisation of transl/national practices in literary circulation 205 7.1. Translating Caribbean localities: going with or against the flow of global forces? 207 7.1.1. (Criss)crossings of the Caribbean sea 20 7 7.1.2. Authenticating the (polyvocal) Caribbean 212 7.1.3. Towards a Caribbeanisation of global translations? 216 7.2. Isla Negr a Editores : publishing dentro y fuera del Caribe 219 7.2.1. Los nuevos caníbales y El canon secuestrado : two of Isla Negra ’s flagship imprints 22 3 7.2.2. Revamping the canon 228 7.2.3. Restoring silenced voices and muted echoes 230 7.2.4. Thresholds of transversal readings 233 7.3. From ‘minor transnationalisms’ to transN/Lational solidarities 235 7.3.1. From ‘ dependent independenc es’… 236 7.3.2. … to unpredictable solidarities 237 7.3.3. Generating alternative literary coordinates from the Caribbean 239 Conclusion: Caribbean literatures in translation, or when thresholds become ecotones 242 Bibliography 253 Appendix 274 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work would not have been possible without the help and support of a number of mentors, advisors and colleagues from the University of Warwick. I owe my deepest gratitude to my supervisors, Prof. Fabienne Viala and Prof. Susan Bassne tt for their encouragements , insightful advice and constant support . In their respective ways, Prof. Bassnett and Prof. Viala have shown invaluable guidance and patience with my work. This dissertation was made possible by the generous funding of the Yesu Persaud Centre for Caribbean Studies (YPCCS) , for which I am most grateful. Additional funding from the YPCCS for a research project conducted in Puerto Rico was key to the development of this work and, I am, here again, very thankful to its members and g enerous donators for the unique research opportunities they offered me. Special thanks also go to colleagues from the School of Modern Languages at Warwick, in particular to Prof. Alison Ribeiro de Menezes, for her support as Head of Hispanic Studies and her advice during both upgrade phases . For the second upgrade, I also wish to extend my thanks to Dr Chantal Wright, from the English Department, for her helpful advice. T o Dr. Clemencia Rodas - Pérez, Ms. Raquel Navas and Dr Leticia Villamediana González from Hispanic Studies, my warmest thanks for welcoming me in your classes so that I c ould learn Spanish. ¡ Muchas gracias a todas ! My w armest thanks extend to all the members of the Instituto de Estudios del Caribe at UPR , Río Piedras, and in particul ar to Dr. Lowell Fiet, Dr. Humberto Garcia - Muñiz and Nadya Menendez for welcoming me with such generosity in Puerto Rico and for facilitating my stay in San Juan. Thank you to Carlos Roberto Gomez Beras for opening the doors of Isla Negra Editores to me and for including me as part of his ‘family’ in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Thank you to my ‘abuela’ for reminding me to take notes for my the sis during our coffee rituals. Thank you also to those of you Puerto Ricans who offered me a sense of home and greatly contri buted to this work through simple acts of kindness and a sense of solidarity beyond compare . I would like to express my deepest thanks to my parents for thei r love, trust and belief in me, and to you, Benoit, for the enduring love, support and beautiful humanity. DECLARATION Selected material included in this thesis has appeared in the following publications: Laëtitia Saint - Loubert, ‘Publishing against the tide: Isla Negra Editores , an example of pan - Caribbean transL/National solidarity’, La traducción literaria en el Gran Caribe , Mutatis Mutandis , 10, 1 (2017), 44 – 67. Laëtitia Saint - Loubert, ‘(Ré)écritures bifocales: trans - lations et trans - fusions portoricaines dans les autotraductions de Rosario Ferré et Esmeralda Santiago’, Auteurs - Traducteurs: l’entre - deux de l’écriture (Paris: Presses Universitaires de Paris Ouest, forthcoming) . ABSTRACT This thesis aims to investigate how works by Anglophone, Francophone and Hispanophone Caribbean writers circulate in translation. The texts under study include allographic translations as well as cases of self - translation . Caribbean texts and t heir translations are analys ed through the prism of the threshold , which offers a multi - faceted entry point into key themes and aspects of Caribbean literature as well as into translational strategies. When discovering the Caribbean in and through translation, readers experience the crossing of multiple thresholds, be they topo graphical, cultural, linguistic or imaginary. The dual nature of the threshold, which both opens into and signals a limit, heralds movement and continuity on the one hand , but al so invokes potential resistance on the other hand . Departing from the semiotic approach adopted by Genette in his seminal study on paratexts as ‘thresholds of interpretation’, this work seeks to examine thresholds as strategic sites of nego tiation fo r translators. Their visibility, in particular, is associated with forms of trespassing that tease out the concepts of authority and originality . When it comes to Caribbean writing, t hresholds are presented as ambiguous sites of opaque revelations , a view that contra s ts with a more traditional understanding of paratext as a s pace aiming towards (absolute) clarification of the text. Rather, liminality is presented as favouring acts of subversion whereby Caribbean writing emerges as a literature that manifests constant (re)appropriations and generates renewed (af)filiations for the region. Problematic crossings are also explored to reveal that thresholds act as enclaves of cultural resis tance where Caribbean litera ture is concerned. Here , Caribbean untranslatabili ties are investigated as a feature of the region’s fragmentary nature , which, once turned into a poetics of translation based on reciprocal hospitality, offer s possible routes of access to a pan - Caribbean cultural memory .