Esperança Bielsa
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 117258 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Esperança Bielsa |
| NOMBRES | Esperança |
| APELLIDO | Bielsa |
| FIRMA | BIELSA E |
| AFILIACIONES | Universitat Autonòma de Barcelona |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5882-3382 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 33 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 76 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 32 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2005 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 5 |
The Catastrophe of Culture
This article seeks to reconstruct the forgotten promise of art in the face of widespread processes of commodification of culture and aestheticization of reality. It employs the tools of critical theory, mainly drawing from the works of Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, to specify the nature of an aesthetic dimension and its significance for an analysis of the present. Through an actualization of their insights, it argues for the renewal of cult…
The language of animals
Sociology has recently started to challenge the exclusion of nonhuman animals from its object of study. Language, which traditionally served to assert human domination over nature and the other animals, emerges in this context as a key medium through which previously silenced voices can be heard, contributing to devise more respectful ways of coexisting. This article deploys the conceptual and methodological framework of a translational sociology…
Theses on Translation
Debat sobre Walter Benjamin i la traducció
Fa ja més de cent anys de la publicació original de l’assaig de Walter Benjamin 'La tasca del traductor', considerat un dels textos centrals del segle XX sobre la traducció. En un debat públic que va tenir lloc el 20 de febrer de 2024, el filòsof Antonio Aguilera, la sociòloga Esperança Bielsa i el traductor Fruela Fernández van conversar sobre la seva recent col·laboració en el llibre Benjamin y la traducción (Ediciones del Subsuelo, 2024). Biel…
Debate on Walter Benjamin and Translation
It has been over one hundred years since the original publication of Walter Benjamin's essay “The Task of the Translator”, considered a central text of the twentieth century on translation. In a public debate, held on 20 February 2024, the philosopher Antonio Aguilera, the sociologist Esperança Bielsa and the translator Fruela Fernández discussed their recent collaboration in the book Benjamin y la traducción (Ediciones del Subsuelo, 2024). Biels…
Tesis sobre la traducción
Translating 'Understanding'/ understanding translation
This article has its starting point in an apparently marginal undertaking: Bridget Fowler's translation of Pierre Bourdieu's 'Comprendre', a methodologically oriented chapter which appeared at the end of the collectively authored book La Misère du monde. Its objective is to show how translation, beyond its apparent marginality, is in fact a key component of sociological practice, and inseparable from sociological interpretation and theorizing. Be…
Translation and the climate emergency
This article puts translation at the centre of an understanding of science, culture and politics and their interrelations in the face of anthropogenic climate change. It argues for an integrated approach to these traditionally separate knowledge domains in the form of a translational sociology that is centred on the politics of translation across languages, disciplines and knowledges, as well as practices of political advocacy and deliberation an…
Recommendations on the translation of academic texts in the social sciences and the humanities
These recommendations are addressed not only to translators, but to all users of translation, including authors and readers of academic texts, journal editors and publishers, as well as reviewers. They call attention to the translated nature of many works that are often viewed as originals, and through which English as the academic lingua franca is constantly produced and reproduced in a multilingual space. Rather than approaching translation as …
Benjamin's Baudelaire
This article focusses on Walter Benjamin's approach to the experience of modernity through his long-term engagement with the poetry of Charles Baudelaire. Benjamin translated Baudelaire and produced a theoretical reflection on translation based on this experience in his essay 'The Task of the Translator'. Years later, he would place Baudelaire at the centre of his attempt to reconstruct the prehistory of modernity in his great unfinished work The…
Translating academia. Implications for knowledge production in the social sciences and the humanities
This introduction to the special issue provides some context on the linguistic landscape that characterizes contemporary academia and on the significance of academic translation for knowledge production. It elaborates on how the adoption of English as academic lingua franca, one of the most pervasive aspects of a global university system shaped by neoliberalism, has led to the coexistence of differently placed languages in a competitive market. M…
Politics of translation
For many at the periphery and semi-periphery of the global academic field, translation or self-translation into English has become a prerequisite for the pursuit of an academic career. This article focuses on the academic translators who translate humanities and social science texts and the crucial but highly invisible role of their everyday translation practices in relation to the dominance of Anglophone discourses and concepts. It articulates a…
Cross-cultural engagement through translated news
Scholars in journalism and media studies have reflected on the cosmopolitan potential of the media and of news in particular to facilitate cross-cultural engagement. However, the key mediating role that translation plays when the news crosses linguistic and cultural borders has remained largely unexamined. This article considers how different translation strategies can maximise or minimise the potential journalism holds to facilitate cross-cultur…
Translational Sociology
For a translational sociology
This article argues for a non-reductive approach to translation as a basic social process that shapes both the world that sociologists study and the sociological endeavour itself. It starts by referring to accounts from the sociology of translation and translation studies, which have problematized simplistic views of processes of cultural globalization. From this point of view, translation can offer an approach to contemporary interconnectedness …
Ignored works
This essay interrogates ignored works of art as a special kind of object that can shed some light on the nature of contemporary art worlds, as well as on wider social processes regarding our relationship with things and with our past. It provides a materialist perspective focused on discarded objects as an alternative to a mystifying view of the artworld that takes artistic autonomy for granted and obliterates the social conditions of creativity …
From 'the people' to the crowd
This article examines the sociological value of Elias Canetti's work on crowds and power. It explores crowd action and imagery in the push for Catalan independence through the analysis of materials published on Twitter by Tsunami Democràtic, which emerged to coordinate the response to the sentencing of Catalan political leaders after the unilateral declaration of independence. It then goes on to discuss how a crowd-based approach offers a supplem…
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Globalization
Routledge Handbook of Translation and Globalization
Cosmopolitanism beyond the Monolingual Vision
This article examines how debates on language and democracy have been differently framed within multiculturalist and cosmopolitan frameworks, questioning some of their underlying assumptions and demonstrating a basic continuity with reference to what is approached as the monolingual vision. It then goes on to propose an alternative conception of the language of democracy based on plurilingualism, linguistic hospitality, and translation. Such a co…
Politics of translation
Translation has gained a central importance in recent accounts of cosmopolitanism that emphasise global interdependence and the interaction between different cultures and traditions. In this context, it becomes necessary to formulate a politics of translation that questions some idealist assumptions about translation that are present in the sociological literature, specifies translation as a fundamentally ethnocentric act, and formulates relevant…
Cosmopolitismo y política de la traducción
La traducción tiene una relevancia central en las teorías recientes sobre el cosmopolitismo que subrayan la interdependencia global y la interacción entre culturas y tradiciones distintas. En este contexto, es necesario formular una política de la traducción que cuestione algunos presupuestos idealistas sobre la traducción presentes en la literatura sociológica, que especifique la traducción como un acto fundamentalmente etnocéntrico y que propon…
News translation
This article examines the changing context for the study of news translation with reference to three disciplines: social theory, translation studies and media studies. It argues that the attention given to translation in the context of what has been called the new cosmopolitanism favours a new perception of the significance of multilingualism and translation and also forces us to ask new questions about the cultural and social role of translation…
Theodor W. Adorno's homecoming
Theodor Adorno has often been portrayed as the prototypical example of the permanent exile, even though, after living fifteen years in Britain and the US, he returned to Germany in 1949 and spent the last twenty years of his life there. This article traces Adorno's reflections on his homecoming and analyses how his experiences of exile and return shaped his mature thought. Conceiving homecoming not simply as a return to one's origins but as a con…
Cosmopolitismo, alteridad, traducción
En los ltimos aos, el cosmopolitismo ha sido objeto de una renovada atencin en las ciencias sociales como un importante componente de la creciente consciencia global. El denominado nuevo cosmopolitismo ha cuestionado la pretendida unicidad del mundo (Robertson, 1992) que ciertas teoras sobre la globalizacin asuman para subrayar la multiplicidad de perspectivas y la interaccin entre tradiciones diversas. A un amplio abanico de publicaciones (monog…
Globalisation and Translation
Two fundamental features of globalisation are the overcoming of spatial barriers and the centrality of knowledge and information. These developments, which result in the increased mobility of people and objects and a heightened contact between different linguistic communities (mass tourism, migration, information and media flows) signal, in spite of the predominance of English as a global lingua franca, an exponential growth in the significance o…
Cosmopolitanism as Translation
Whereas globalization theory was predominantly silent about the role of translation in making possible the flow of information worldwide, assuming instant communicability and transparency, translation has gained central importance in recent accounts of cosmopolitanism that emphasize global interdependence and the negotiation of difference. In this context, a specification of translation processes provides a way of analysing the form in which inte…
The pivotal role of news agencies in the context of globalization
The global media play a fundamental role in contemporary globalization, making possible instant communication and promoting an experience of global connectedness. The globalization of media communications has deeply shaped the modern journalistic field in the last 150 years and, at the same time, global news organizations have been instrumental in creating the very conditions that have made globalization possible. In this article I explore the re…
The Lives We Choose to Remember
Collective memory is intertwined with remembering the dead. Systematic forgetting affects certain ethnic groups, nationalities and classes disproportionately. This study assesses whom we choose as our heroes by commemorating them in obituaries. It is the first cross-national, historical approach to this subject. Constant structures are shown in different Western countries over time in terms of the selection of individuals for this honour. In part…
Some remarks on the sociology of translation
This article explores the emerging field of the sociology of translation and, at the same time, outlines the relevance of translation for sociology with respect to the global production and circulation of sociological works. Drawing on already existing accounts developed in interdisciplinary translation studies, it is argued that an awareness of the complex nature of translation is fundamental for a self-understanding of the sociological endeavou…
For a translational sociology
This article argues for a non-reductive approach to translation as a basic social process that shapes both the world that sociologists study and the sociological endeavour itself. It starts by referring to accounts from the sociology of translation and translation studies, which have problematized simplistic views of processes of cultural globalization. From this point of view, translation can offer an approach to contemporary interconnectedness …
Politics of translation
Translation has gained a central importance in recent accounts of cosmopolitanism that emphasise global interdependence and the interaction between different cultures and traditions. In this context, it becomes necessary to formulate a politics of translation that questions some idealist assumptions about translation that are present in the sociological literature, specifies translation as a fundamentally ethnocentric act, and formulates relevant…
Translating academia. Implications for knowledge production in the social sciences and the humanities
This introduction to the special issue provides some context on the linguistic landscape that characterizes contemporary academia and on the significance of academic translation for knowledge production. It elaborates on how the adoption of English as academic lingua franca, one of the most pervasive aspects of a global university system shaped by neoliberalism, has led to the coexistence of differently placed languages in a competitive market. M…
Politics of translation
For many at the periphery and semi-periphery of the global academic field, translation or self-translation into English has become a prerequisite for the pursuit of an academic career. This article focuses on the academic translators who translate humanities and social science texts and the crucial but highly invisible role of their everyday translation practices in relation to the dominance of Anglophone discourses and concepts. It articulates a…
Cross-cultural engagement through translated news
Scholars in journalism and media studies have reflected on the cosmopolitan potential of the media and of news in particular to facilitate cross-cultural engagement. However, the key mediating role that translation plays when the news crosses linguistic and cultural borders has remained largely unexamined. This article considers how different translation strategies can maximise or minimise the potential journalism holds to facilitate cross-cultur…
Cosmopolitanism beyond the Monolingual Vision
This article examines how debates on language and democracy have been differently framed within multiculturalist and cosmopolitan frameworks, questioning some of their underlying assumptions and demonstrating a basic continuity with reference to what is approached as the monolingual vision. It then goes on to propose an alternative conception of the language of democracy based on plurilingualism, linguistic hospitality, and translation. Such a co…
Homecoming as displacement
International mobility is a growing phenomenon in which academicians are highly represented. While studies on transnationalism have widely focused on the mobility of people in terms of migrancy and exile, homecoming has been much less studied. This article contributes to filling this gap by analysing the homecoming experiences of three social scientists who have coincided in a Catalan university. The narrative of their personal trajectories and e…
Benjamin's Baudelaire
This article focusses on Walter Benjamin's approach to the experience of modernity through his long-term engagement with the poetry of Charles Baudelaire. Benjamin translated Baudelaire and produced a theoretical reflection on translation based on this experience in his essay 'The Task of the Translator'. Years later, he would place Baudelaire at the centre of his attempt to reconstruct the prehistory of modernity in his great unfinished work The…
From 'the people' to the crowd
This article examines the sociological value of Elias Canetti's work on crowds and power. It explores crowd action and imagery in the push for Catalan independence through the analysis of materials published on Twitter by Tsunami Democràtic, which emerged to coordinate the response to the sentencing of Catalan political leaders after the unilateral declaration of independence. It then goes on to discuss how a crowd-based approach offers a supplem…
News translation
This article examines the changing context for the study of news translation with reference to three disciplines: social theory, translation studies and media studies. It argues that the attention given to translation in the context of what has been called the new cosmopolitanism favours a new perception of the significance of multilingualism and translation and also forces us to ask new questions about the cultural and social role of translation…
Recommendations on the translation of academic texts in the social sciences and the humanities
These recommendations are addressed not only to translators, but to all users of translation, including authors and readers of academic texts, journal editors and publishers, as well as reviewers. They call attention to the translated nature of many works that are often viewed as originals, and through which English as the academic lingua franca is constantly produced and reproduced in a multilingual space. Rather than approaching translation as …
Theodor W. Adorno's homecoming
Theodor Adorno has often been portrayed as the prototypical example of the permanent exile, even though, after living fifteen years in Britain and the US, he returned to Germany in 1949 and spent the last twenty years of his life there. This article traces Adorno's reflections on his homecoming and analyses how his experiences of exile and return shaped his mature thought. Conceiving homecoming not simply as a return to one's origins but as a con…
Globalisation and Translation
Two fundamental features of globalisation are the overcoming of spatial barriers and the centrality of knowledge and information. These developments, which result in the increased mobility of people and objects and a heightened contact between different linguistic communities (mass tourism, migration, information and media flows) signal, in spite of the predominance of English as a global lingua franca, an exponential growth in the significance o…
The Lives We Choose to Remember
Collective memory is intertwined with remembering the dead. Systematic forgetting affects certain ethnic groups, nationalities and classes disproportionately. This study assesses whom we choose as our heroes by commemorating them in obituaries. It is the first cross-national, historical approach to this subject. Constant structures are shown in different Western countries over time in terms of the selection of individuals for this honour. In part…
The pivotal role of news agencies in the context of globalization
The global media play a fundamental role in contemporary globalization, making possible instant communication and promoting an experience of global connectedness. The globalization of media communications has deeply shaped the modern journalistic field in the last 150 years and, at the same time, global news organizations have been instrumental in creating the very conditions that have made globalization possible. In this article I explore the re…
Cosmopolitanism, translation and the experience of the foreign
Cosmopolitanism has received in recent years renewed attention in the social sciences as an important component of the heightening of global consciousness, which Roland Robertson emphasised as the significant subjective dimension of globalisation (1992). The term is used not only to describe an empirical reality but also to question established disciplinary trends and to point to new methodological orientations. Thus, it denotes both an objective…
Some remarks on the sociology of translation
This article explores the emerging field of the sociology of translation and, at the same time, outlines the relevance of translation for sociology with respect to the global production and circulation of sociological works. Drawing on already existing accounts developed in interdisciplinary translation studies, it is argued that an awareness of the complex nature of translation is fundamental for a self-understanding of the sociological endeavou…
Cosmopolitanism as Translation
Whereas globalization theory was predominantly silent about the role of translation in making possible the flow of information worldwide, assuming instant communicability and transparency, translation has gained central importance in recent accounts of cosmopolitanism that emphasize global interdependence and the negotiation of difference. In this context, a specification of translation processes provides a way of analysing the form in which inte…
Homecoming as displacement
International mobility is a growing phenomenon in which academicians are highly represented. While studies on transnationalism have widely focused on the mobility of people in terms of migrancy and exile, homecoming has been much less studied. This article contributes to filling this gap by analysing the homecoming experiences of three social scientists who have coincided in a Catalan university. The narrative of their personal trajectories and e…
Cosmopolitismo, alteridad, traducción
En los ltimos aos, el cosmopolitismo ha sido objeto de una renovada atencin en las ciencias sociales como un importante componente de la creciente consciencia global. El denominado nuevo cosmopolitismo ha cuestionado la pretendida unicidad del mundo (Robertson, 1992) que ciertas teoras sobre la globalizacin asuman para subrayar la multiplicidad de perspectivas y la interaccin entre tradiciones diversas. A un amplio abanico de publicaciones (monog…
Apertura cosmopolita al otro. Una aproximación al papel de la traducción en la teoría social del cosmopolitismo
Aquest article analitza el paper de la traducció en la teoria del cosmopolitisme actual i, més generalment, en una concepció de cosmopolitisme com a obertura als altres. Mentre que la teoria de la globalització ha estat, en gran part, cega a l’important rol de la traducció en els processos d’interconnectivitat global, des de la teoria del cosmopolitisme més recent s’ha atorgat una nova centralitat a la traducció, en un context en què se subratlla…
News translation
This article examines the changing context for the study of news translation with reference to three disciplines: social theory, translation studies and media studies. It argues that the attention given to translation in the context of what has been called the new cosmopolitanism favours a new perception of the significance of multilingualism and translation and also forces us to ask new questions about the cultural and social role of translation…
Theodor W. Adorno's homecoming
Theodor Adorno has often been portrayed as the prototypical example of the permanent exile, even though, after living fifteen years in Britain and the US, he returned to Germany in 1949 and spent the last twenty years of his life there. This article traces Adorno's reflections on his homecoming and analyses how his experiences of exile and return shaped his mature thought. Conceiving homecoming not simply as a return to one's origins but as a con…
Politics of translation
Translation has gained a central importance in recent accounts of cosmopolitanism that emphasise global interdependence and the interaction between different cultures and traditions. In this context, it becomes necessary to formulate a politics of translation that questions some idealist assumptions about translation that are present in the sociological literature, specifies translation as a fundamentally ethnocentric act, and formulates relevant…
Cosmopolitismo y política de la traducción
La traducción tiene una relevancia central en las teorías recientes sobre el cosmopolitismo que subrayan la interdependencia global y la interacción entre culturas y tradiciones distintas. En este contexto, es necesario formular una política de la traducción que cuestione algunos presupuestos idealistas sobre la traducción presentes en la literatura sociológica, que especifique la traducción como un acto fundamentalmente etnocéntrico y que propon…
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Globalization
Routledge Handbook of Translation and Globalization
Cosmopolitanism beyond the Monolingual Vision
This article examines how debates on language and democracy have been differently framed within multiculturalist and cosmopolitan frameworks, questioning some of their underlying assumptions and demonstrating a basic continuity with reference to what is approached as the monolingual vision. It then goes on to propose an alternative conception of the language of democracy based on plurilingualism, linguistic hospitality, and translation. Such a co…
Ignored works
This essay interrogates ignored works of art as a special kind of object that can shed some light on the nature of contemporary art worlds, as well as on wider social processes regarding our relationship with things and with our past. It provides a materialist perspective focused on discarded objects as an alternative to a mystifying view of the artworld that takes artistic autonomy for granted and obliterates the social conditions of creativity …
From 'the people' to the crowd
This article examines the sociological value of Elias Canetti's work on crowds and power. It explores crowd action and imagery in the push for Catalan independence through the analysis of materials published on Twitter by Tsunami Democràtic, which emerged to coordinate the response to the sentencing of Catalan political leaders after the unilateral declaration of independence. It then goes on to discuss how a crowd-based approach offers a supplem…
Cross-cultural engagement through translated news
Scholars in journalism and media studies have reflected on the cosmopolitan potential of the media and of news in particular to facilitate cross-cultural engagement. However, the key mediating role that translation plays when the news crosses linguistic and cultural borders has remained largely unexamined. This article considers how different translation strategies can maximise or minimise the potential journalism holds to facilitate cross-cultur…
Translational Sociology
For a translational sociology
This article argues for a non-reductive approach to translation as a basic social process that shapes both the world that sociologists study and the sociological endeavour itself. It starts by referring to accounts from the sociology of translation and translation studies, which have problematized simplistic views of processes of cultural globalization. From this point of view, translation can offer an approach to contemporary interconnectedness …
Translating academia. Implications for knowledge production in the social sciences and the humanities
This introduction to the special issue provides some context on the linguistic landscape that characterizes contemporary academia and on the significance of academic translation for knowledge production. It elaborates on how the adoption of English as academic lingua franca, one of the most pervasive aspects of a global university system shaped by neoliberalism, has led to the coexistence of differently placed languages in a competitive market. M…
Politics of translation
For many at the periphery and semi-periphery of the global academic field, translation or self-translation into English has become a prerequisite for the pursuit of an academic career. This article focuses on the academic translators who translate humanities and social science texts and the crucial but highly invisible role of their everyday translation practices in relation to the dominance of Anglophone discourses and concepts. It articulates a…
Translating 'Understanding'/ understanding translation
This article has its starting point in an apparently marginal undertaking: Bridget Fowler's translation of Pierre Bourdieu's 'Comprendre', a methodologically oriented chapter which appeared at the end of the collectively authored book La Misère du monde. Its objective is to show how translation, beyond its apparent marginality, is in fact a key component of sociological practice, and inseparable from sociological interpretation and theorizing. Be…
Translation and the climate emergency
This article puts translation at the centre of an understanding of science, culture and politics and their interrelations in the face of anthropogenic climate change. It argues for an integrated approach to these traditionally separate knowledge domains in the form of a translational sociology that is centred on the politics of translation across languages, disciplines and knowledges, as well as practices of political advocacy and deliberation an…
Sociology (22 obras) · Philosophy (17 obras) · Political science (17 obras) · Epistemology (16 obras) · Law (14 obras) · Linguistics (12 obras) · Translation Studies and Practices (12 obras) · Politics (11 obras) · Social science (10 obras) · Translation studies (10 obras)