‘You do not become a European by choice but by necessity’: The Alsace border region and its opening up to Europe in the writings of Otto Flake, René Schickele and Hermann Wendel

The three writers Otto Flake, René Schickele and Hermann Wendel met in Straßburg in 1901. Together with other artists and writers they founded the group ‘Das jüngste Elsaß’ (also known as ‘Der Stürmerkreis’). One of the purposes of this artistic group was to shed the ‘hybrid state’ of Alsace as a border region and instead urge that Alsace take on a mediating role in a future united Europe. Their pacifist European approach, which they adhered to during World War I and later on in exile, originated from controversial debates emerging from the extreme tensions caused by German and French nationalism. The three writers viewed Alsace as a symbol of Europe. For their ‘border literature’ Europe offered the possibility of refraining from the concept of nationhood, which is based on homogeneity and therefore violent exclusion, something in which they did not find themselves represented.

Re-Imported Literature or Double Domestication: Shizuko’s Daughter by Kyoko Mori

A text can travel between languages and cultures through translation, but this “travel” can be rather complicated when the text not only goes, but goes back to the culture of origin. This can happen when the text is about the culture of the target language. Translating Memoir of Geisha by Arthur Golden (1997) into Japanese can be one example. Due to the expected level of readers’ cultural knowledge, the translator will have to use some different translation strategies compared to when the text is translated into other languages. This “travel” of the text can be even more complicated if the author’s first language or original cultural background is different from the language in which s/he writes the text – for example, an author whose first language is Japanese, but writing his/her text in English, about stories that take place in Japan – and then the text is translated into Japanese by a translator, to be published in Japan. This is the case of Kyoko Mori, a Japanese-American writer who had grown up in Japan until she moved to U.S. as an adult. Her first novel, Shizuko’s Daughter was published in U.S. in 1993. It is autobiographical, and therefore the story takes place in Japan, with all its personages being Japanese. The novel was translated by Makiko Ikeda and published in Japan in 1995. Four of Mori’s novels are published in Japan, but the author never translated her own novels into Japanese. This happened before the cross-border literature boom in Japan and may be considered as its precursor. In the present study, the “travel” of this text will be studied from two aspects – exoticisation and translation. The novel belongs to the minority literature in U.S., and its Japanese aspects seem to be emphasized in its reading (in its cover or in book reviews), whereas in Japan, its publication was called “Reimported Japanese literature”, and the fact it was written in English attracted great attention. It was an exoticisation from both ends. As for the translation, source and target texts will be studied in detail, to identify the cases of change, addition (of extra information), omission, correction of culturally wrong information (if any) and their motives will be considered. Unnatural expressions and translationese will also be studied, considering if they can be avoided when the first language of the author is Japanese.

The politics of translating ethnographic ideoscapes the death and life of Aida Hernandez: a border story

The ecology of immigration discourse is an ideoscape in flux. It is a landscape constructed along human mobility, lifeworlds, ontological state security as well as along emotional and institutional complexities. There has been significant recent proliferation of border literature and ethnographies that represent narratives of migrants on the U.S-Mexico border. Ethnography as non-fiction literature documents border trajectories. This paper seeks to address how these trajectories are represented and or translated through a case study of the non-fiction work, The death and life of Aida Hernandez: a border story by Aaron Bobrow-Strain (2019) in which there is a distinct ecology in the ethos of ethnography and immigrant criminalization. This case study assesses therefore the relation between the politics of ethnographic ideoscapes, translation and agency based upon Critical Discourse Analysis (Wodak & Kollner, 2008; Wodak & Meyer, 2016) as well as evaluation and decision-making (Munday, 2012) when translating ethnography as a genre of represented voices.

The Political Geographies of Migration: The Borders, from Static Lines to Mobile Entities

The article explores the border literature in political geography in order to understand the contemporary proliferation of bordering practices in the Western world. It takes the case of President Trump administration’s policies to show how borders can be concealed in social and political practices inside of sovereign territory. This expansion of geographical borders continually shapes the socio-spatial identities of migrants. The text also analyzes why the traditional bordering practice of building border walls is still an appealing resource aiming at keeping immigrants away from Western territories, even after the promise of a “borderless world” in the late 20th century. This article argues that the expansion of border walls is explained by the analysis of three factors: the transformations on the refugee protection framework after the 90s, the change in states’ perception of refugees as a threat to Western societies, and the fear of states to be perceived as actors non-capable to maintain their sovereignty. These contemporary practices are consistent with recent debates in border theory that see the border as a mobile entity instead of a static territorial line separating two units of land. This article aims at fostering the idea of border studies as a way to unveil new forms of power and control. It also pretends to foster an understanding of the interconnectedness of border practices around the world.

Are Constants Constant?

The boundaries of the artwork visibly change the perception of the seemingly unshakable physical laws. For example, the works of writers of the beginning and end of the twentieth century, who created samples of the so-called. “Border literature” (N.L. Leiderman), we consider the ethnocultural component of certain physical categories and their role in creating the image of “their own” and “alien” national world within the framework of Russian-language literature. As a “counterweight” to each other, the images of the world of the nomad steppe and sedentary Slavic people are used.