Linguistic Potentiality and Technological Reproducibility:Walter Benjamin's Theory of Translation Revisited
| Autor: | Hui-wen Cheng, 鄭惠雯 |
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| Rok vydání: | 2015 |
| Druh dokumentu: | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Popis: | 103 This study aims at an investigation into the intricate interplay between language and technology in German thinker Walter Benjamin’s theory of translation. With the recent “cultural turn” in literary studies, Benjamin’s theories have been widely cited in literary, cultural and translation criticism. However, concepts of communicability and reproducibility as potentiality in his thought on language and technology is often overlooked in his translation theory; thus, my discussion will center on these topics. One of Benjamin’s most well-known concepts on translation as “afterlife” tends to be read as a figure of speech, but in fact it refers to the unnamable potentiality of language that helps to prevent the reduction of language as a mere instrument. With his increasing interest in Marxism, Benjamin further revised his language theory in the 1930s. He incorporated historical elements into theological concerns, maintaining that language contains the traces of nonsensuous similarity between man and matter. The divinity and infinity of God’s Word is inherent in the language of man. When man is expelled from the paradise and falls into time and mortality, language is also transformed and continues its own life in repetitions. As Benjamin sees language as a key medium with which man interacts with the world around him, the question of how technology and human experience are interrelated is particularly significant to his discussion of Techne. This study is meant to provide a rereading of Benjamin’s conceptualization of language so as to explore the fundamental questions of translation and writing in our own age. Contemporary French philosopher Bernard Stiegler’s theorization of technics is used in the discussions to ask how translation, writing and technical prosthesis are related to one another and how they are to be understood in our highly globalized world. Specifically, this study would address the following questions: how does Benjamin deal with linguistic potentiality through the antithesis between the communicable and non-communicable aspects of language? How is Benjamin’s theory of language and translation related to his later thinking on technological reproducibility? In other words, how is linguistic potentiality related to technological reproducibility? Also, how does the mimetic bond between man and things in Benjamin’s conceptualization and the transductive relation between what Stiegler terms the who and the what help to see language and writing a singular technical object? And finally, how are translation, orthographic writing and reproducibility related to one another in our globalized age? Hopefully, these discussions of translation could provide new insights into the nature of translation as a special technical object in our age. |
| Databáze: | Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations |
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