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Article published In:
Translation and Interpreting Studies
Vol. 19:1 (2024) ► pp.1–20

Text as haunt

The spectrality of translation

| Kent State University
| The University of Akron
The spectral in translation may be considered an opportunity for opening, and the textual haunting that results, a way of conceiving of other-inhabitedness. Texts, translations, authors and translators have long been framed in the discourse of hauntedness as a way of coming to terms with their complex subjectivities. A hauntological approach to translation allows for an engagement with the presence-in-absence of a ‘source,’ the translational disjunctures of time and space, the return of the traumatic and the repressed, and the promise of alterity. We posit three potential components of translational spectrality: (1) translation and trauma; (2) haunted texts and readings, including acts of translation; and (3) the spectral author and translator. The figure of the ghost confronts that of the autonomous author, at the same time giving voice to the (dis)embodied translator and attendant invisibilities of their status.
Keywords: spectrality, hauntology, trauma, palimpsest, undecidability
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Haunted translations: Retranslation and trauma
  • Haunted texts and readers
  • Spectral authors and translators
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 June 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.22060.was
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