Culturally undervalued as secondary in relation to the original, translation is often perceived as the occasion of a trauma for the translator, who finds himself diverting energy from a creative activity to a derivative practice. This traumatic situation constitutes a cultural problem which peripheral cultures can hardly deal with and which must be solved in one way or another. This article is an attempt to problematize some cultural practices which present themselves as forms of therapy for the trauma: (i) the romantic attempt to deny at all costs the practice of literature as a form of imitation of European models and (ii) the use of deconstruction as a cultural practice which denies the primacy of the origin. What characterizes these practices intended as denials of the trauma is, the occlusion of questions of domination and power. Perceived in terms of a theory of institutional power such as the one proposed by Foucault in What is an author?, these cultural practices might well be disclosed as pseudo-therapies which confirm the status quo.