Translating Lotman and Bakhtin from Russian into Spanish in Cuba: Desiderio Navarro’s work on critical thinking development

Abstract

ABSTRACT In post-1959 Cuba, Desiderio Navarro became an autodidact translator and actively participated in the process of social transformation. Capable of performing quality translations into Spanish from more than 15 languages, mostly from Eastern Europe, he has often been the first to translate and publish a solid corpus of East European texts in different fields of theory, from ‘orthodox and heterodox Marxism; Structuralism; Reception Theory; to the Postmodern Poststructuralism.’ Applying complexity thinking as main frame of reference, particularly the principle of organizational recursion, provides a context to explore the downward causative power of semiosis on reality. I intend to show in this article how the translation of Lotman and Bakhtin into Spanish by Navarro contributed and continue to develop the critical-thinking capabilities of several generations of Cuban intellectuals and artists. If development is a controversial concept, one even ‘doomed to extinction’, it is time to further problematize it.