Against Translation? Displacement, Procedures and Use in Contemporary French Poetic Practice [Contre la Traduction? Déplacement et usages dans les pratiques poétiques françaises contemporaine]

Abstract

This article examines a range of poetic works that favour repurposing, collage, montage, misuses of language and formal procedures as translational procedures. It suggests that these procedures enable innovative thinking about retranslation. By analysing and defining their characteristics in terms of forms, poetics and aesthetics, this article also discusses whether they should be framed as translations, or as symbolic reappropriations of the object called “translation”.

Keywords

• translation
• repurposing
• hybridity
• innovation
• proceduralism