Cannibal Theologies in Colonial Portuguese America (1549-1759)

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 64-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Kittiya Lee

This article examines Jesuit-signed texts written in the Brasílica lingua franca and used in the religious conversion of native peoples in colonial Portuguese America (1549-1759). I study translation strategies for conveying the sacrament of Communion, arguing that doctrinal explanations and word choices recorded in catechisms and dictionaries reflect Tupi-Guarani beliefs that shaped Christianity. These translations merged the theophagous doctrine of the Eucharist with Tupinambá vengeance and exocannibalism, which were central to rituals enacted to bring about that earthly utopia that the Indians called the Land Without Evil. Thus did a distinct eschatology form, compressed with thick layers of Tupi-Guarani and Iberian Catholicism in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In late colony, these became reinterpreted by non-Tupi-Guarani Indians who renamed the Eucharist. But in every telling, the promise of the Eucharist remained the same: that the eating of an other gave access to salvation and eternal bliss.

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Tri Septa Nurhantoro

Indonesian literature is rich with cultural nuance expressed by an author in his/her works. Being translated into world lingua franca would make the literary work read by more people, but surely, it is challenging, as a translator must apply the most appropriate translation strategies. Senyum Karyamin is one of Indonesian literary works that represent local culture and has been translated into English. Based on the analysis, in translating 122 Javanese cultural lexicons in Senyum Karyamin, a translator applied 7 strategies, namely: transference (34 data, 27.87%), omission (9 data, 7.37%), descriptive equivalence (19 data, 15.58%), cultural equivalence (25 data, 20.51%), generic word (29 data, 23.78%), additional explanation (3 data, 2,.47%), and footnote (3 data, 2.47%). The orientations of translation ideology were foreignization (translating 59 data – 48.39%) and domestication (translating 63 data – 61.51%). It can be concluded that the preservation of Javanese cultural lexicon is not optimally executed by the translator because the domestication slightly dominates the foreignization. However, the wide variety of applied translation strategies shows that translation practice is dynamic.


2021 ◽  
pp. 009059172098868
Author(s):  
P. J. Brendese

This essay engages Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus as a salient intervention into modern political theory. I analyze the work as a cipher for the tensions inhabiting Euro-modernity’s stitched together fictions of racial determinism and racial dynamism legible in slavery, assimilationist projects and White fears reverberating throughout. Adapting the mythical ancient Prometheus as one who steals fire from the gods to create humans and civilization, Frankenstein dramatizes the risks and monstrous results of White imperial masculinity as a Euro-colonial Promethean project of subject formation and race-making. Viewed through the prism of the Modern Prometheus, modernity in general and liberal humanism in particular are recast as monster-making projects. The European “discovery” of Indigenous peoples amplified Promethean aspirations to create subjects through civilizational processes of religious conversion, the infusion of Enlightenment rationality, and assimilation into whiteness. Politically, the Promethean capacity to engineer humans and proto-humans using Native peoples as raw material allowed progressives to argue against outright extermination in favor of cultural genocide. Seeking to create a subserviant species, Victor Frankenstein confronts a revolting insurrection of his own making—a Creature who refuses slavery, claims mastery over his creator and demands a female companion. Yet Frankenstein’s fear of creating “a race of devils” betrays a terror of what Whites know, but refuse to acknowledge, about themselves and racial others.


Derrida Today ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yifeng Sun

Deconstruction is decidedly unsettling in that it destabilizes the otherwise comfortably assumed understanding of the nature of translation. What is also controversial is that it may make translation impossible, considering that it explicitly acknowledges the impossibility of translation. Yet Derrida emphasizes the necessity of translation as well, thus foregrounding the need to negotiate with the non-negotiable, and for this reason, to translate the untranslatable. Deconstruction captures and elucidates the complexity of translation in relation to the variability and complexity of its nature and practice. Despite the disconcerting observation of his devastatingly relativist overtone and open-endedness, Derrida does not uphold complete free play, as is repeatedly pointed out by himself and other scholars. This paper argues that the context of translation plays a regulating role and intends to unravel what he calls translation as both possible and impossible, both respectful and abusive. Inspired by Derrida's profound contention that translation is in a way more about ‘what is not there’ than ‘what is there’, this paper will map some of the multiple implications of meaning and various modes of representation in translation, in which different meanings can be played with so as to give rise to spaces for exploring and expanding the range of translation strategies and methods.


Author(s):  
Mohamed Ahmed

In the late 1950s, Iraqi Jews were either forced or chose to leave Iraq for Israel. Finding it impossible to continue writing in Arabic in Israel, many Iraqi Jewish novelists faced the literary challenge of switching to Hebrew. Focusing on the literary works of the writers Shimon Ballas, Sami Michael and Eli Amir, this book examines their use of their native Iraqi Arabic in their Hebrew works. It examines the influence of Arabic language and culture and explores questions of language, place and belonging from the perspective of sociolinguistics and multilingualism. In addition, the book applies stylistics as a framework to investigate the range of linguistic phenomena that can be found in these exophonic texts, such as code-switching, borrowing, language and translation strategies. This new stylistic framework for analysing exophonic texts offers a future model for the study of other languages. The social and political implications of this dilemma, as it finds expression in creative writing, are also manifold. In an age of mass migration and population displacement, the conflicted loyalties explored in this book through the prism of Arabic and Hebrew are relevant in a range of linguistic contexts.


2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Cocargeanu

Romanian children's literature, particularly translations for children, has rather low visibility in international children's literature scholarship, and translations of Beatrix Potter have not been extensively researched, either. This article contributes to filling these gaps by exploring the challenges involved in the recent publication of the first licensed Romanian edition of Beatrix Potter and the strategies employed to solve them. It identifies extra-textual challenges, related to the possibility of publishing Potter, the licensing process, the selection of particular tales and book formats for publication, and marketing strategies; and textual challenges, arising from Potter's writing style, the interdependence between visual and verbal aspects in her tales, their cultural specificity and read-aloud qualities. It also discusses the roles of the British and Romanian publishers in the publishing process and relates the translation strategies visible in the texts to the translator's apparently divided responsibility towards Potter and the Romanian audience, her conceptions of children and children's literature, and the Romanian literary tradition.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-27
Author(s):  
Abdulloh Fuadi

This paper discusses the discourse about the complexity of ethnic and religious identity monism in Mataram Lombok West Nusa Tenggara; Sasak ethnic is Islam, while Balinese ethnic is Hindu. The question is then does religious conversion also include ethnic conversion? Methodologically, this paper is library research. Several notes related to this discourse are as follows: (1) Increasing conflict escalation occurs during the Reformation era. Identity politics emerge and strengthen. In several conflicts at Mataram, the ethnic and religious identity is thickening. (2) There is a complexity between democracy and diversity. Democracy demands unity, while multiculturalism emphasizes particularity. Balancing them is easy in theory but difficult in practice. (3) It must be distinguished between politics and politicization. In the case of Indonesia, ethnic and religious issues are often politicized by some people to achieve their own group goals. (4) Relying on ethnicity is a natural instinct in self-defense and affirming identity. This is not necessary to be troubled and blamed. (5) These problems are like a Pandora's box, a box full of diseases. It was the reform era that opened the box which had been closed or covered by the New Order. What happened in the Reformation Era is the emergence of various ethnic and religious problems which were not recognized during the New Order era.


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