Feminist Publications and the Transnational Politics of Translation: Reflections from the Field

Abstract

This article investigates the theoretical presuppositions of the travels of feminist theories across the North–South axis, arguing that to theorize in feminism implies to engage in translation, i.e., to translate concepts and terms from one disciplinary field into the analytical categories of another in a process that Spivak characterizes as ‘active transaction of meanings’, i.e., the act of putting one theory in contact or transaction with another (or several others) when reading a literary or social text. In the slippages of this encounter of languages, texts, and meanings, and as a result of necessarily faithless translations, other maps of knowledge become possible. However, for theories and concepts to circulate, the existence of material apparatuses (such as feminist publications) organizing their translation and dissemination becomes necessary. From my particular position as a former co-editor of Revista Estudos Feministas between 1998-2002, I raise some considerations about the practices of mediation exercised by this publication in its translation of feminist theories.