Toward an Eroticism of Translation: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s Translation of Césaire’s A Season in the Congo

I examine here Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s 2010 English retranslation of Aimé Césaire’s 1966 play A Season in the Congo in the context of previous translations and performances of Césaire’s theatrical work. Césaire’s historical drama portrays the last months of Patrice Lumumba’s life and his political fight against Belgium, Western powers, and African secessionists during Congo’s transition from a Belgian colony to a free, independent country. Its retranslation offers an opportunity to study the interlinguistic fate of a dramatic language juxtaposing historical fiction, poetical discourse, and an attempt at creating what the Martinican playwright called an African French, as well as to question the role of translation on the staging of a theater addressing neo-colonialism within a Brechtian dramaturgical tradition. Emily Sahakian has shown the benefits of combining translation criticism with performance analysis for theater studies, reception studies, and higher education pedagogy. Although this article has a comparatively stronger focus on translation criticism, performance analysis is used here to assess how theatrical translation differs from other translational traditions. Spivak’s translation is also of interest to the field of translation studies because of the impact of the renowned translator on this very field. An examination of her translation project will allow us to read her essay on translation with a more thoughtful consideration of her proposed shift from the ethics to the erotic of translation. Following Antoine Berman’s methodology, I have attempted to reconstruct Spivak’s translational project by drawing from several sources: the postcolonial reception of Caribbean theater, contemporary discourse about dramatic translation, previous translations of Césaire’s theater, Spivak’s theoretical essays, and a confrontation between the translated and translating text. I hope my contribution encourages an appreciation of some of the ways Spivak’s erotic of translation can be useful to contemporary theater.