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H2020Individual fellowship2021–2023

TransMemo · Translation and Memory: Strategies of Remembering and Forgetting in Contemporary Arab Migrant Literature

Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2021-04-01 → 2023-07-31
EU contribution
€224,934
Participants
1
Scheme
MSCA-IF

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Results in brief

Translation and Memory: Strategies of Remembering and Forgetting in Contemporary Arab Migrant Literature

TransMemo investigates memory and translation in the context of migration and transcultural movement. Focusing on texts by migrant Arab authors in Britain, and viewing these texts as examples of cultural translation, it proposes a new approach for the enactive and affective engagement of memory with the past from the perspective of the present and analyses forms of remembering in fiction, thus contributing to the theorisation of the movement of people and objects between cultural spaces and how this affects cultural exchange. In so doing, it recognizes the increasing importance of the phenomena of migration and mobility in public and scholarly discourse, reconsidering the literary text as product of translation and movement based in dialogue between disciplines and methodologies concerned with translocal and transnational identity. In light of socio-economic upheavals and a growing body of texts and authors engaged in transcultural writing, TransMemo understands cultural translation as a critical approach for addressing these phenomena which define modern society. Through case studies and readings of Arab British authors, it foregrounds the social reconstruction of memory in the present and the creative production of cultural identity, engaging with migrant writing and memory as translingual and transcultural survival and drawing attention to the processes and effects that shape these narrative constructions in private and public space. TransMemo enhances interdisciplinary research in the study of translation and memory by exploring representations of memory and migration in literary texts and emphasizing the productive dimensions of memory in various forms of cultural movement and exchange.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

Recently, migration has emerged as one of the most serious challenges for society, not only in Europe but also globally. As migration occurs in many cases cross-linguistically and cross-culturally, the migrant is not only torn between two lives and two places, but also between different languages, cultures and identities, bringing to the fore the role of translation as process of recall. While research on translation and memory in migration contexts has emphasized translation as intergenerational transmitter of memory, little attention has been paid to the personal dimension of memory. The proposed research aims at developing a new theory for the translation-memory interface. Drawing on current research in the philosophy of mind, it will analyze the relationship between autobiographic memory and translation, emphasizing the emotional dimension of memory as experience of the body and interaction between people, while at the same time highlighting the role of forgetting. This will be supported by a number of case studies on autobiographic memory in migrant Arab authors in Britain and the US, using the concept of cultural translation. Thus, the project will encourage interdisciplinarity and open new perspectives for research by applying memory concepts to translation and offering a theoretical framework that departs from the traditional, representational paradigm and foregrounds memory as embodied action. In this way, the project will contribute to a better understanding not only of how translation and memory interact, but also of how migration itself as translational experience takes place and what motivates migrants in their continuous quest for and struggle with memory. The action involves a two-way transfer of knowledge backed by a professional training and development plan, including training-through-research, project management, dissemination and communication activities, publications and conferences, teaching and pedagogy, as well as mobility and networks.

Original text from CORDIS.

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Data: CORDIS, © European Union