Contagious Otherness: Translating Communicable Diseases in the Modern Italian and Francophone Novel

Abstract

The words contagion ('to touch together') and translation ('to carry across') share a common course of action and meaning, i.e. that of breaking what 'should be joined or joining [what] should be separate' (Douglas, 1996: 113). In a continuous yet imperceptible way, ideas of risk, corruption and error have been attached as much to the transfer of texts, beliefs and theories as to the spread of diseases. Our immune system fight against outsiders, just like national cultures can shield themselves from the foreign. Yet, if we have come to accept that contagion can be understood as a 'foundational concept in the study of [literature], of religion and of society' (Wald, 2007: 2), translation's epidemiological dimensions have remained relatively unexplored. What do the art of translation and epidemiological science have in common, and how can they inform one another? Why is contagion culturally valuable, but physiologically destructive? How can translation theory contribute to the shaping of a novel, biocultural epistemology of contagion? This essay aims to address these questions by shedding light onto the implicit and understudied translation-contagion link. It offers the first comparative analysis of its kind covering three centuries (nineteenth century-present), two languages (French and Italian), and four contagious diseases (plague, smallpox, Ebola and Aids). It provides an interdisciplinary model to approach the study of literature and epidemiology in a synergic, non-exclusive way, one that is based on the double mobilisation, or 'entanglement' (Whitehead et al., 2016), of literary and medical knowledge.