ABSTRACT
In the brief but provocative essay 'Translating' (1971), Blanchot inverts the conventional hierarchy wherein 'the original' is superior to the translation. He considers the foreign text, not as the unchanging cultural monument in relation to which the translation must forever be an inadequate, ephemeral copy, but as a text in transit, 'never stationary', living out 'the solemn drift and derivation of literary works', constituting a powerful self-difference which translation can release or capture in a unique way. The power of Blanchot's suggestive observations can be released if we translate them yet again (after Sieburth's translation and after the version presented in the foregoing commentary), situating them more locally, taking into account the material determinations of cultural practices. Resistance assumes an ethics of foreignization, locating the alien in a cultural other, pursuing cultural diversity, signalling linguistic and cultural differences and unsettling the hierarchies in the translating language.
