Bodies in Translation (Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association)
Palm Springs, California
Organization: Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association
Event: Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association
From the blazon of Elizabethan poetry to the Human Genome Project, humans have been writing the body for centuries. In his book Barthes, Roland Barthes ponders the translation of the body from flesh to paper, stating, “To write the body. Neither the skin, nor the muscles, nor the bones, nor the nerves, but the rest: an awkward, fibrous, shaggy, raveled thing, a clown’s coat” (180). In his process of writing the body, Barthes strips away surfaces to reveal something other, something that he finds more representative of himself or his essence. This panel aims to explore the role of bodies in translation, and the ways in which translated bodies obscure and/or illuminate our knowledge of physical bodies and the systems and structures that regulate them. Thinking through bodies in a translation framework opens avenues to critically examine knowledges of bodies, and how bodies are conceived in cross-cultural or cross-media representations.
We invite papers that interrogate the body in translation from present to future. What forms do translated bodies take? How do these forms reveal insights about our bodies? What structures inform bodily translation (physical to textual, or textual descriptions between languages)? What structures are laid bare or hidden in the process of translation? How do new media and digital spaces reshape translation of the body? Abstracts should be submitted through the PAMLA portal (https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/).
We welcome considerations of bodies from myriad perspectives, such as:
Mediated bodies
Gendered and/or racialized bodies
Ill/diseased bodies
Disabled/debilitated bodies
Queer bodies
Bodies and ecology
Body politic
Biopolitics
Hybrid bodies
Cyborg/robotic/android bodies
Invented/created/built bodies
Othered bodies
Collective bodies
Phenomenological bodies
Afrofuturism and Indigenous futurism
Post and transhumanism
Sara Santos