What does the translator translate?

By | August 17th, 2018|LRO 83|

We are all translators, readers, interpreters. We are all translated, read, interpreted. Translation, reading, interpretation, occupy a central, crucial place in our existence since before we are born and beyond death. The current debate on abortion, for instance, can be reformulated and elucidated as a debate on the freedom of translation, of reading, of interpretation: [...]

Barbarians at the Gates of Speech

By | November 27th, 2015|LRO 10|

It is a signifier that resonates in the deepest echo-chamber of Europe’s self-understanding, bequeathed to us as it is - along with philosophy, rhetoric and democratic ideals - by the culture of the ancient Greeks. Already there, half a millennia before Christ, ‘barbarism’ was doing a great deal of symbolic work. Certainly it invoked the [...]

Chanson d’Amour and the Jouissance of the Other

By | October 2nd, 2015|LRO 02|

Chanson Française owes its origins of course to the Chanson Réaliste moment of Aristide Bruant and Le Chat Noir around 1893 that brought young intellectuals together with the demi monde of artists, workers and prostitutes. ‘People spoke a lot about sexuality’, affirms Clark, ‘and it produced some strange and dark characters’. Hélène Hazera is even [...]