ABSTRACT
The theory and practice of translating as/like a woman, being a political and social discourse that criticizes and subverts the patriarchal practices which render women invisible, assumes a feminine subjectivity. That is, it makes plain that the common basis of its activity is a subject who lives in a feminine body. However, despite sharing a common politics of identity, the different feminisms, among them those in the field of translation, interpret feminine subjectivity in different ways. Similarly, they also differ in their definitions of their universal categories, such as 'women', 'identity', 'gender', 'sex', 'experience' and 'history'. As a result, some translators cast doubt on the possibility of building a feminist theory of translation given the contingency and mobility of its universal categories. This raises an urgent question: how can a politics of identity survive if it does not take into account the idea that its universal categories must be permanently open and questioning in order to lay the ground for the inclusions or exclusions of its future demands? This paper attempts to move closer to the unresolved question of the feminine subject in the practice of translation as/like a woman, as well as in all fields of general feminist study.
