Translating Duras

It would be inappropriate for me to write an apologia for the text by Marguerite Duras that I have translated, to run interference for her as it were. Still, it is perhaps desirable, given the context of this number of Contemporary Literature devoted to the question of l'lcriture fiminine, and given the nature of Duras's text, which puts it at variance with certain views on sexuality, to provide a commentary on the translation, for which I am responsible, itself merely the starting point of an analysis that will inevitably and appropriately generate friture. L'Homme assis dans le couloirI challenges the anglophone translator in a way that illuminates the cultural as well as the linguistic differences between France and the English-speaking world (in this case, America in particular). It challenges the feminist translator in a way that illuminates the question of sexual difference and how it is perceived and represented here and in France. L'Homme assis dans le couloir is a hard text to translate in more ways than one. It may very well be, however, that the question of l'&criturefiminine is itself precisely one of translation. That this is the case is implied in a number of Critical Inquiry devoted to Writing and Sexual Difference, in which the editor, Elizabeth Abel, claims that The analysis of female talent grappling with a male tradition translates sexual dif

Art · French Historical and Cultural Studies · French Literature and Critical Theory · History

• Calling Yourself a Woman

  Mary Lydon•differences•1991

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