عنوان

Translation, Race, and Ideology in Oriki Orixá

LA119375

انگلیسی

Translation, Race, and Ideology in Oriki Orixá

[Article]

Jonathan Fleck

Leiden

Brill

In the midst of an influential career writing on Brazilian cultural production, the sociologist-turned-political marketer Antonio Risério publishes Oriki Orixá, a book of Portuguese re-translations of Yoruba oriki poetry (1996, reprinted 2013). Understanding translation as a partial and ideologically-motivated act of representation, the current article situates Oriki Orixá within an ideology of race in Brazil. I take into account textual and paratextual materials including the book's introduction by Augusto de Campos; the editorial promotion of the work; its circulation within a literary network; and the highly mediated histories of the source poems. Oriki Orixá simultaneously promises a universal poetic "invention" and an ethnographic "recuperation" of a foreign text. Ultimately, the white author frames his translation as an affective encounter with an African literary tradition. This encounter participates in-and reinforces-a discourse of racial exceptionalism in which an abstract celebration of African-European contact occludes continuing histories of domination and inequality. In the midst of an influential career writing on Brazilian cultural production, the sociologist-turned-political marketer Antonio Risério publishes Oriki Orixá, a book of Portuguese re-translations of Yoruba oriki poetry (1996, reprinted 2013). Understanding translation as a partial and ideologically-motivated act of representation, the current article situates Oriki Orixá within an ideology of race in Brazil. I take into account textual and paratextual materials including the book's introduction by Augusto de Campos; the editorial promotion of the work; its circulation within a literary network; and the highly mediated histories of the source poems. Oriki Orixá simultaneously promises a universal poetic "invention" and an ethnographic "recuperation" of a foreign text. Ultimately, the white author frames his translation as an affective encounter with an African literary tradition. This encounter participates in-and reinforces-a discourse of racial exceptionalism in which an abstract celebration of African-European contact occludes continuing histories of domination and inequality. In the midst of an influential career writing on Brazilian cultural production, the sociologist-turned-political marketer Antonio Risério publishes Oriki Orixá, a book of Portuguese re-translations of Yoruba oriki poetry (1996, reprinted 2013). Understanding translation as a partial and ideologically-motivated act of representation, the current article situates Oriki Orixá within an ideology of race in Brazil. I take into account textual and paratextual materials including the book's introduction by Augusto de Campos; the editorial promotion of the work; its circulation within a literary network; and the highly mediated histories of the source poems. Oriki Orixá simultaneously promises a universal poetic "invention" and an ethnographic "recuperation" of a foreign text. Ultimately, the white author frames his translation as an affective encounter with an African literary tradition. This encounter participates in-and reinforces-a discourse of racial exceptionalism in which an abstract celebration of African-European contact occludes continuing histories of domination and inequality. In the midst of an influential career writing on Brazilian cultural production, the sociologist-turned-political marketer Antonio Risério publishes Oriki Orixá, a book of Portuguese re-translations of Yoruba oriki poetry (1996, reprinted 2013). Understanding translation as a partial and ideologically-motivated act of representation, the current article situates Oriki Orixá within an ideology of race in Brazil. I take into account textual and paratextual materials including the book's introduction by Augusto de Campos; the editorial promotion of the work; its circulation within a literary network; and the highly mediated histories of the source poems. Oriki Orixá simultaneously promises a universal poetic "invention" and an ethnographic "recuperation" of a foreign text. Ultimately, the white author frames his translation as an affective encounter with an African literary tradition. This encounter participates in-and reinforces-a discourse of racial exceptionalism in which an abstract celebration of African-European contact occludes continuing histories of domination and inequality.

2016

342-356

Journal of World Literature

1/3

2405-6480

Brazil

race

retranslation

translation

Yoruba poetry

Jonathan Fleck

10.1163/24056480-00103004

p

[Article]

275578

a

Y