&Now 2015: Blast Radius

Many translation discussions and discourses are still concerned with the act of translation: Is it possible? How is it done? Keeping such essential questions in mind, this panel will address a related question: What happens next? What does a translation do? How does it move (across boundaries and bodies)? How does an age of globalization, US imperialism, global wars and ecological crises affect the way we think about the translation and circulation of literary texts? Instead of thinking in the traditional model of replication and imitation, we will look at translation as part of a volatile literary model that challenges normative notions of nationality, authorhsip, monolinguality, textual producition and simplistic notions of cultural difference. Instead of asking if translation is possible, we will look at its excesses, vulnerabilities, intensities, transgressions, disruptions, and homeopathic possibilities. If translation is impossible, we will explore these threatening, seductive and crucial impossibilities.