The location of the 'translation field': Negotiating borderlines between Pierre Bourdieu and Homi Bhabha

Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic goods has been widely applied to the reconstruction of various specific fields, such as the literary, the political or the media field. In the effort to re-enact the mediation processes between different fields – e.g. the translation procedure –, however, it becomes apparent that Bourdieu’s analytical tools do not seem sufficient for the conceptualization of a “mediation space”. This paper will attempt to further develop Bourdieu’s field theory by means of Homi Bhabha’s concept of the Third Space. This will enable us to trace the mechanisms underlying the enlacements between the various fields and to detect the processual character of the translation procedure, rather than the impact of its product(s).

Published online: 25 October 2007
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.74.08wol