From: Charles J. Stivale
I am sending the attached brief comment on the issue of _Discourse_ that
you would like reviewed. I do not know if it will be possible for you to
include it, but frankly, this issue of _Discourse_ is a disgraceful example
of indifference to the efforts of the translators who produced more than
half of the issue.
My background is extensive work on Deleuze and Guattari (see my Web site
<http://www.langlab.wayne.edu/Romance/FreDeleuze.html>).
Thank you for your consideration.
*
This review has several purposes. First, I wish to bring attention to the
journal _Discourse_ vol. 20 no. 3, entitled: 'Gilles Deleuze, A Reason to
Believe in this World'. It is guest edited by Reda Bensmaia and Jalal
Toufic. It contains translations (mostly by Tim Murphy and Melissa McMahon)
of six articles by Deleuze, of two seminars (one on Leibniz, April 15,
1980, that I translated for Richard Pinhas's Web Deleuze site), of two
interviews (one of which is Deleuze's excoriating blast against the
'nouveaux philosophes'), and of one group statement by Bourdieu, Deleuze,
Jerome Lindon, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet to the French government protesting
the Gulf War. There are also essays by: Bruno Paradis, Raymond Bellour,
Steve McCaffery, Tom Conley, Michael Hardt, Jean-Clet Martin, Jalal Toufic,
David Bunn, Doug Rice, Alphonso Lingis, John Corbett, and Eric Alliez, with
an introductory exchange of letters by Bensmaia and Toufic.
That's the informative, affirmative part. The other purpose is less
affirmative, but needs to be emphasized nonetheless. I had originally
thought of entitling this review 'Translators are Scum', and here's why:
having agreed to prepare my translation for this issue of _Discourse_, I
was unpleasantly surprised to see that among the contributors' names at the
end of the issue, none of the translators' names are listed, despite the
fact that nearly half of the pieces included therein were produced through
the efforts of the translators. It's not that I or any of the translators
need to see our names in print other than at the end of the texts we
translated. I am simply fascinated and appalled by the disregard with which
editors treat those of us who spend fairly wasted time preparing texts for
readers who cannot read the appropriate foreign language, in this case
French. Tim Murphy surely deserves better treatment than the cursory: 'We
would like to thank Fanny Deleuze and the [unnamed] translators: 'Thank
you'.' And then there is the repetition of the misspelling, Melissa
McM*u*han after her two translations.
What's the point of this whinging? Simply stated: when one puts in the kind
of effort that Tim, Melissa, and many others have done in translating texts
long and short by Deleuze and Guattari, it seems a bit tedious, fatiguing,
dare I say, insulting . . . to feel like an also-ran when it comes to the
scholarly pecking order. Need I mention that many of the eager and earnest
readers of Deleuze and Guattari, as well as of this issue, are perhaps only
dimly aware that these two writers wrote all their works in French? And
that without the labor of translators, most of these eager and earnest
souls would be without access to these texts? Such commonplaces, however
self-serving, apparently must be reiterated, and no review of this issue of
_Discourse_ can be complete without setting the record straight.
Charles J. Stivale
Wayne State University
Detroit, Missouri, USA
http://www.langlab.wayne.edu/Romance/FreDeleuze.html
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