Translation and/as Empathy: Mapping Translation Shifts in 9/11 Fiction Kirsty Alexandra Hemsworth A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Sheffield School of Languages and Cultures September 2017 ABSTRACT This thesis seeks to establish an unprecedented empathic approach to the comparative analysis of 9/11 fiction in translation. The central tenet of this study is that translation – as a creative, subversive and disarming force – is a fundamentally empathic process. As parallel and reciprocal works of fiction, 9/11 novels and their translations are not only bound by the centrifugal force of the traumatic event at their centres, but perform, expand and subvert the same empathic structures and interactions on which they are founded. By foregrounding an innovative comparison of translation shifts, this thesis will map the potential for interactivity and reciprocity across the translation divide, and reinstate the translated text as a rich terrain for textual analysis. This thesis will focus on four key works of fiction and their French translations: Falling Man and L’homme qui tombe (Don DeLillo), The Submission and Un Concours de Circonstances (Amy Waldman), Terrorist and Terroriste (John Updike), and The Zero and Le Zéro (Jess Walter). This topographical overview of 9/11 fiction offers a deliberately fragmentary and episodic account of a genre that is unsettled in translation, with a view to capturing, and testing the limits of, the vast temporal, empathic and imaginative networks in which the texts and their translations participate. By drawing complex empathic maps of 9/11 fiction and their translations, this thesis will emphasise the value of translation shifts as an innovative and critical tool for literary analysis. It seeks to expand the limits of contemporary literary translation approaches to accommodate dynamic, empathic forms of analysis and textual modes of comparison, where both source and target texts are indivisible from the empathically-unsettled terrains in which they are forged. i ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Without funding from the University of Sheffield Faculty of Arts Doctoral Academy and the support of the School of Languages and Cultures, this project would not have been possible. No problem has been too small for Kris Horner, Claire Leavitt, Caroline Wordley and Ehsan Rashid, who have kept the wheels turning and always provided help and reassurance. Special thanks must also go to Department of Germanic Studies for welcoming me as one of their own and providing me with an academic home for the past four years. I am immensely grateful to my supervisors David McCallam and Jane Woodin. Their support and guidance has been without compare, and their unwavering enthusiasm for my research and its ambitions has always bolstered my own belief in its worth. I owe much to Joanna Kremer and Nina Schmidt – the trailblazers of our PhD office – for their advice and friendship, and for making our corner of Jessop West that bit brighter. Liz Trueman and Sarah Muller have continued this tradition, and I hope that this thesis sits in good company alongside the work of these amazing women. My time at Sheffield has been defined by the wonderful people alongside whom I have been lucky enough to work. Thanks must go to the inspirational 301 tutor team, for the many hushed conversations of encouragement – held behind the lectern during our workshops – that always left me feeling lighter. A special thanks must also go to Brady Crooks for our many conversations and his invaluable suggestions. This thesis would not be what it is today without the love, support and encouragement of my very own Magnificent Seven. To Will, thank you for your patience, your boundless positivity and for reminding me of the life waiting for us beyond this thesis. Cyd Sturgess, Deborah Madden and Hannah Robbins are the kindest and most courageous women I know. They are fierce friends and brilliant academics, and I thank them from the bottom of my heart for the laughter they have brought to the past four years. To my parents, thank you for everything. This thesis is a testament to your love, support, encouragement and unwavering belief in me: it is as much yours as it is mine. And finally, thank you to Melanie, whose determination knows no bounds, and without whom I would be lost. iii iv Translation and/as Empathy: Mapping Translation Shifts in 9/11 Fiction CONTENTS ABSTRACT i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii INTRODUCTION: At the Boundaries of 9/11 Fiction and Literary p.1 Translation CHAPTER 1: Mapping Empathy in Falling Man and L’homme qui p.31 tombe CHAPTER 2: The Submission, Un Concours de Circonstances and the p.73 Empathic Limits of Aftermath CHAPTER 3: Axes of Empathy: Locating the ‘Terrorist’ Worldview p.103 in Terrorist and Terroriste CHAPTER 4: Empathy, Exceptionalism and the Imaginative Failings p.143 of The Zero and Le Zéro CONCLUSION: Empathy and Translation in the Ruins of the Future p.183 BIBLIOGRAPHY p.215 v vi INTRODUCTION At the Boundaries of 9/11 Fiction and Literary Translation Some sixteen years on from the September 11th attacks, the future for 9/11 fiction is uncertain, as the intensity and boundless aftermath of the event seems, at least in terms of literary production, to be approaching its end. In the wake of the traumatic event, Richard Gray reiterated that ‘some kind of alteration of imaginative structures [was] required to register the contemporary crisis’, articulating a transnational and expansive vision for the genre.1 Yet while literary translation offers an innovative reframing of these extraterritorial ambitions, no study of 9/11 fiction in translation exists, and translation shifts continue to be neglected as an insightful and critical tool for literary analysis. This thesis seeks to establish an unprecedented imaginative structure for the comparative study of 9/11 fiction in translation. As a fundamentally empathic process, translation expands the boundaries of the traumatised city through the creation of a reciprocal and interactive translated text: an empathic double that echoes and unsettles the same empathic structures on which the novels are founded. By drawing complex empathic maps of 9/11 fiction and their translations, this thesis will stage an empathic unsettling of the genre in translation, and expand the limits of contemporary literary translation approaches to accommodate dynamic, empathic forms of analysis and textual modes of comparison. Both 9/11 fiction and contemporary translation theory are defined by their territorial gaze: as the first looks outwards, to transnational, global perspectives on the traumatic event, translation studies has become increasingly inward-looking and reliant on recycling its own critical models and paradigms. Literary translation studies faces the greatest risk of stagnation, and finds itself being remade as a study of the translator and of the contexts and motivations to which contemporary translation is seen as inexorably bound. This thesis proposes a break from such models and a recentering of the texts, whether original or translations, as a rich terrain for contemporary study. This is by no means a retreat or a return to source-oriented models for translation, but a new perspective on how texts and translation might be relocated as parallel, interactive texts, connected empathically across the translation divide. This thesis upholds translation as a 1 Richard Gray, ‘Open Doors, Closed Minds: American Prose Writing at a Time of Crisis’, American Literary History, 21.1 (2009), 128-148, <http://muse.jhu.edu/article/257852/pdf> (p.134). 1 fundamentally empathic process, and in the connection between text and translation as one of reciprocity, exchange and empathic momentum. As such, this thesis is embedded in literature: in the rich nuances, reverberations and shifts that mark the divergences and commonalities of texts and translations. This research does not seek to extend or replicate the perspective and polarising tendencies of established translation theories and strategies, or to impose contextual or reception-led frameworks of interpretation on. Instead, this thesis begins with translation shifts, and traces the empathic trajectories of 9/11 fiction, both as a genre of American fiction and of translation: categories that, in this thesis, are collaborative equals, rather than separate or devolved entities. This introduction will outline the three core principles of this study – 9/11 fiction, translation theory and empathy – and seeks to illustrate how these three seemingly disparate concepts converge to create a unique imaginative and comparative approach to the analysis of 9/11 fiction in translation. This thesis will begin with the event at its centre – 9/11 – as a force for literary creation and dilation, and as the staging ground for the comparative study of empathic encounters in translation. Us, Them and the Mechanics of Alterity Discourses on 9/11 – whether political, ideological, literary or critical – crystallise around two distinct concepts: those of alterity and of incommensurability. 9/11 fiction is consistently articulated in these terms: by literary scholars, for whom 9/11 novels are seen to echo, though rarely problematise, the inherent conflict and culpability found in wider commentaries on the attacks, and by novelists, grappling with notions of incommensurability and the lethargy of fiction writing in response to real-time, televised disaster. A raft of studies on 9/11 fiction have hinged on the extent to which 9/11 novels might be judged as adequate responses to the polarising narratives of alterity and conflict that still remain definitive of the divisive force of the traumatic event. 9/11 fiction has largely been found wanting by literary scholars, almost entirely in response to its perceived failure to escape the short-sighted, introspective and ultimately selfish nature of individual trauma. Yet aside from the external pressures or expectations exerted on the works, alterity and incommensurability are incredibly problematic for comparative studies of 9/11 texts and translations.