Publications
Publication details [#5997]
Dimitriu, Ileana. 2002. Translation and existential awareness: interview with philosopher Mihai Sora. In Dimitriu, Ileana, ed. Translation, diversity and power. Special issue of Current Writing. Text and Reception in Southern Africa 14 (2): 83–102.
Publication type
Article in Special issue
Publication language
English
Keywords
Person as a subject
Abstract
This interview discusses translation and/ as power from the point of view of a public intellectual: a prominent Romanian philosopher and media personage who compares post-totalitarian conditions in Eastern Europe and South Africa. A theoretician of social dialogue in the tradition of Husserl, Heidegger and Péguy, Sora discusses the role of the intellectual in bridging cultural difference and in addressing the problematic of alterity and sub-alternity in postcolonial times. Referring to his own publishing and translating experience under the draconian censorship of Stalinism, Sora regards translation as intercultural dialogue to have been a powerful form of resistance to oppressive regimes, as well as a moral force that helped erode the credibility of non-dialogic ‘marxist’ practices behind the Iron Curtain.
Source : Based on abstract in journal