Walter Benjamin's Philosophy of Language and Translation

Yearbook of Translational Hermeneutics | Jahrbuch für Übersetzungshermeneutik, 2023

In this review of Douglas Robinson's evolving, comprehensive, and thorough commentary on Walter Benjamin's "The Task of the Translator", I have sought to broaden the perspective by incorporating insights from other linguistic fields. Robinson's "Translation as a Form: A Centennial Commentary on Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Task of the Translator’" stands out as a seminal reference work for all those interested in this foundational essay of twentieth-century translational hermeneutics.

Abstract Georg von Hamann’s philosophy of language is known to be extremely important in the forming of young Walter Benjamin’s thought. The refusal of instrumentalism of language and his concepts of pure and messianic language, in the 1916 text, «On Language as Such and the Language of Man», when he points his critique of the bourgeois concept and refusal of language as a medium, is created in a particular concept that constitutes one of the main vectors of his thought. Not only does Hamann appear as a privileged author, as quoted in the text, but he also borrows from other authors such as Herman Cohen, a Neo-Kantian, and still seeks the genesis of a messianic conception of language in the Kabbalah. In this text appear not only the authors who so greatly influenced Bejamin’s concept of language but also how Benjamin integrated that influence and created new configurations in his thought. It is in language, experience and also history, that young Benjamin sets, since early on, the bases of his thought and of his work, while establishing a dialog with his influencing authors. What matters the most, however, is not so much the marking of his thought, but especially the way the markings are inscribed in the singularity of his work. Keywords Language, Messianic, History, Experience, Translation

Forces of Education: Walter Benjamin and the Politics of Pedagogy (Bloomsbury), 2022

This essay explores the connections between Walter Benjamin's early writings on youth and pedagogy and his philosophy of language and translation. The essay identifies three theoretical concepts which are fundamental to Benjamin's philosophy of language and translation, namely, silence, medium, and transmission, and shows how each of thee principles emerged out of and guided Benjamin's pedagogical thought.

The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms, 2019

The concept of “experience” is one of the cornerstones underpinning the whole of Walter Benjamin’s philosophy, from the early writings about student life up to the notes for the Baudelaire book and the Parisian passages, but it is also extremely complex and multifaceted, and will always give a hard time to any close reader of Benjamin. All the more welcome is therefore a book like Tamara Tagliacozzo’s, which purports to shed some light, not only on the origins of, and influences on, this concept, but also on its metamorphoses and “afterlife” throughout Benjamin’s career. The point is precisely—and stressing it is one of the great merits of this book—that the concept of experience in Benjamin’s oeuvre does not remain confined to a “phenomenological” inquiry but expands, evolves and transforms to finally influence and shape many other fundamental fields, from knowledge and critique to philosophy of history and messianic time, from art to politics.

In: Benjamin Figures. Ed. M.J.A. Kasten, H.J. Paul, G.T.M. Visser. Bautz Traugott Verlag, Nordhausen (Germany) - (forthcoming)

In recent decades the interconnectedness between people and places has grown immensely and the question of translation has become one of the central challenges of our time. It is a fairly big question that affects not only the intellectual tradition of the humanities but also the everyday world of a globalized economy, technology, politics and societies. In my essay I argue that Benjamin's figure of the translator offers a complex and flexible intellectual site to imagine the future of a politics of cultural difference. I focus on his most famous essays, "Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers" [The Task of the Translator] which in recent decades has become an important device for thinking through diaspora, postcolonialism, and globalization. In his essay, Benjamin creates a path toward a transcultural process and transformation by referring to all languages as fragments. With this perspective, he acknowledges the differences among languages as well as their interconnectedness and complementary nature and promotes a non-hierarchical, permanent open process of mediation and interaction between languages and cultures. I shall begin with a brief discussion of Benjamin's essay, then I move to some thought-provoking postcolonial approaches to Benjamin's translation theory elaborating on the politics of cultural difference and how they are useful in reshaping the task of translators and, I suggest, humanities scholars alike in the increasing globalized world.

Abstract: This essay is a brief study of translation as a practice of aesthetic resistance seen from a historical and philosophical perspective. Translation is perceived as the process of transition and negotiation within the ‘third space’ between various different hybrid cultural contexts and their discursive constraints, and referred to as ‘paratranslation’. It summarizes the first attempts to think of translation as an almost ‘holistic’ paradigm and the aesthetics of intervention from Romantic philosophy onwards. It attempts to show how Walter Benjamin’s master narrative, the utopia of ‘pure language’, encourages continuous resistance to the totalitarianism of the idea of the ‘original’, to aesthetics (within the sense of the perception of the real) and to dominant discourses. It subsequently defines the idea of ‘progress’, which considers translation as aesthetic resistance, as a process of construction in constant deconstruction. It concludes by exemplifying the notion of translation as a paradigm of intervention in modernity with a brief analysis of the transcreation performed by Erin Mouré on Fernando Pessoa/Alberto Caeiro’s poetic cycle, O Guardador de Rebanhos (The Keeper of Sheep). Keywords: Resistance, aesthetics, philosophy of translation, paratranslation, Walter Benjamin, pure language, Erin Mouré, Fernando Pessoa

MLN (Comparative Literature Issue) 103.5, 1988

Babel: Aspectos de Filoloxía Inglesa e Alemá , 2009

It is somewhat paradoxical that Walter Benjamin, who is by now all but universally recognised as one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century, is also a name cited with reverence in the academic field of Translation Studies - even though he produced only a sliver of reflections on the subject. There are, indeed, only two frequently cited texts in which Benjamin considers the subject: the early, esoteric essay 'On Language as Such and on the Language of Man' ('Über die Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen', 1916), and the very well-known piece 'The Task of the Translator' ('Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers', 1923). From these two slim texts comes Benjamin's surprising fame as a theorist of translation, concerning which we may note two interesting points: first, that the later essay is actually linked to the practice of translation, since it was originally published as Benjamin's preface to his own translation into German of Charles Baudelaire's poemsequence Tableaux Parisiensi); and second, that since by no means all those who write on Walter Benjamin know his native language, German, his writings on translation are more often than not quoted in translation (English, Spanish, Italian or whatever).This study will first examine the key elements of Benjamin's concept of translation, and then look in detail at certain aspects of the different language versions of his posthumous masterpiece, the study of nineteenth-century Paris centring on the arcades that is Das Passagen-Werk.