ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the “politics of visibility” (Vázquez 27) that informs memory and translation work. I argue that both memory and translation have the potential to function as vehicles for cross-cultural dialogue and instruments of sociocultural redress by making historically marginalised experiences legible. However, I also suggest that when motivated by a hegemonic mandate, memory and translation can manifest processes of erasure, through which the experiences of particular groups and individuals are subjugated or denied. In making this case, I contend that memory and translation are fundamentally imbricated practices that shape the way the past is understood in the present. Following Rolando Vázquez (2011), I examine two different processes of mnemonic translation (a term I use to describe the circulation – or blockage – of memories and memorative objects between and beyond linguistic and cultural borders): The first reveals an economy of truth, in which linguistic and cultural differences are erased in favour of a hierarchical and homogenised reading of history; the second construes an ecology of differences that allows for multiple coexisting interpretations of the past. Ultimately, this chapter contends that processes of mnemonic translation would ideally facilitate pluralizing exchanges that celebrate rather than elide linguistic, cultural, and historical diversity.
