post-colonial_translation

Border writing in Quebec 67
meanings. In creating a fictional equivalent for an interlingual
translation, Brossard provides the reader with an opportunity to
experience the kinds of shifts which occur when texts move from one
language to another.
From the very minimal changes that do occur, however, we may infer
that Brossard holds a rather optimistic view of translation. There is no
suggestion here of the essential incommunicability of culturally specific
meaning; no spectre of the aporia of linguistic transfer. This is
particularly significant in the case of Nicole Brossard, whose work –
though quite abundantly translated – has grown out of a languagecentred
feminism. During the 1970s and early 1980s, Brossard was
one of the most active and articulate proponents of writing focused on
the signifier, and in active conflict with conventional syntactic form.
Nevertheless, unlike the work of her contemporary, France Théoret,
for instance, Brossard’s writing does not falter or show impotence; it
has even been called ‘classical’ in the broad sweep of ever-present
command. 8 Though aware of the conceptual constraints which limit
writing and communication in a patriarchal universe, though obsessed
with the figures of death which patrol yet its wide desert spaces, Brossard
speaks in Mauve Desert of the life of the word. This life is not
spontaneous, not attached to any authentic mode of being. It is
laboriously composed, and then patiently transferred and rediscovered.
Through this process of transmission which has no beginning, the
translator becomes a postmodern heroine. She constantly threatens to
transgress the boundaries of her role, the geographical distance
separating the hot clear air of the desert and the weak winter light of
the north, the line of authority which allows the author to make decisions
which the translator would like to contest. Brossard’s translator refuses
to participate in an economy of loss, in the pathos of dislocation, the
loss of spontaneous contact with one’s inner self, of emotional
immediacy and wholeness, which is so often associated with translation.
Brossard’s optimism brings novelty to a field dominated by clichés of
betrayal and failure, and suggests that translation can participate in
new logics of exchange, contribute to the creation of new solidarities.
DANIEL GAGNON: THE AESTHETICS OF
INTERLANGUAGE
Daniel Gagnon is the author of a double work: La Fille à marier in its
translated French version, and The Marriageable Daughter in English.
The novel is made up of a series of fifty imaginary letters written by