ABSTRACT

This chapter seeks to queer Spivak's famous adagio that translation is the "most intimate act of reading" by means of teasing out the corporeal-linguistic entanglements engendered by such intimacy. Like sex, the scene of translation bears witness to a "coming undone" of the corporeal-linguistic self as a fully independent, sovereign, and territorialized entity. The chapter shows how such vigilance characterizes Nathanael's most recent poetic work, and their ongoing reckoning with the aporias and indeterminacies at play in the 'trans' of translation. In contrast to idealized notions of intimacy as respectful proximity, the chapter draws attention to its violent and frustrating aspects—the "fuck" of translation. Languages come undone in translation just like subjects come undone in sex. The chapter suggests that the "coming undone" of the scene of translation gestures toward ongoing entanglements of corporeal and linguistic materialities that require a kind of attention that proceeds more by way of attunement than analytic parsing.