Promise of the Foreign , livre ebook

251

pages

English

Ebooks

2005

Écrit par
Rafael Vicente L. Rafael

Publié par
Duke University Press

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251

pages

English

Ebooks

2005

Lire un extrait

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus

Publié par

Duke University Press

Date de parution

05 décembre 2005

Nombre de lectures

EAN13

9780822387411

Langue

English

In The Promise of the Foreign, Vicente L. Rafael argues that translation was key to the emergence of Filipino nationalism in the nineteenth century. Acts of translation entailed technics from which issued the promise of nationhood. Such a promise consisted of revising the heterogeneous and violent origins of the nation by mediating one's encounter with things foreign while preserving their strangeness. Rafael examines the workings of the foreign in the Filipinos' fascination with Castilian, the language of the Spanish colonizers. In Castilian, Filipino nationalists saw the possibility of arriving at a lingua franca with which to overcome linguistic, regional, and class differences. Yet they were also keenly aware of the social limits and political hazards of this linguistic fantasy.Through close readings of nationalist newspapers and novels, the vernacular theater, and accounts of the 1896 anticolonial revolution, Rafael traces the deep ambivalence with which elite nationalists and lower-class Filipinos alike regarded Castilian. The widespread belief in the potency of Castilian meant that colonial subjects came in contact with a recurring foreignness within their own language and society. Rafael shows how they sought to tap into this uncanny power, seeing in it both the promise of nationhood and a menace to its realization. Tracing the genesis of this promise and the ramifications of its betrayal, Rafael sheds light on the paradox of nationhood arising from the possibilities and risks of translation. By repeatedly opening borders to the arrival of something other and new, translation compels the nation to host foreign presences to which it invariably finds itself held hostage. While this condition is perhaps common to other nations, Rafael shows how its unfolding in the Philippine colony would come to be claimed by Filipinos, as would the names of the dead and their ghostly emanations.

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Publié par

Duke University Press

Date de parution

05 décembre 2005

EAN13

9780822387411

Langue

English

THE PROMISE OF THE FOREIGN

NATIONALISM AND THE TECHNICS OF TRANSLATION IN THE SPANISH PHILIPPINES

Vicente L. Rafael

Duke University Pressdurham and london2005

∫2005 Duke University Press

Printed in the United States of America

on acid-free paper$

Typeset in Scala and Othello types by

Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

appear on the last printed page of this book.

For Leila, Carlos, and Aliaha

To redeem in his own tongue that pure language exiled in the foreign tongue, to liberate by transposing this pure language captive in the work, such is the task of the translator. walter benjamin

Each time I open my mouth, each time I speak or write, Ipromise. Whether I like it or not. This promise heralds the uniqueness of a language yet to come. It . . . precedes all language, summons all speech and already belongs to each language as it does to all speech. . . . It is not possible to speak outside of this promise that givesalanguage, the uniqueness of the idiom, but only by promising to give it. jacques derrida

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments Preface Introduction: Forgiving the Foreign 1. Translation and Telecommunication: Castilian as a Lingua Franca 2. The Phantasm of Revenge: On Rizal’sFili 3. The Call of Death: On Rizal’sNoli 4. The Colonial Uncanny: The Foreign Lodged in the Vernacular 5. Making the Vernacular Foreign: Tagalog as Castilian 6: Pity, Recognition, and the Risks of Literature in Balagtas 7: ‘‘Freedom=Death’’: Conjurings, Secrecy, Revolution Afterword: Ghostly Voices: Kalayaan’s Address Notes Works Cited Index

xi xv 1

17 36 66

119

132

159

183 191 213 223

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