Topic: Translating Cuba(nidad)
Abstract:
In an article published on the website of the Cuban Institute of Cultural Sciences of the Diaspora, Ferrán Núñez states unequivocally that “cubanidad [Cubanness] does not exist,” labelling it “a convenient and facile concept; manufactured by our social architects, to perfume the Spaniards of Cuba with a diabolic mixture, whose composition would include royal palms, the male tocororo, Indian and African blood,” adding, “everything bad that has happened on that island must be attributed to Cubanness; an ideal, manipulated by the usual suspects.” Núñez’s statement evokes Borges’s infamous observation that in “there are no camels in the Quran,” which the Argentine master uses to argue against so-called “local color,” maintaining, like Núñez, that “the Argentine cult of local color is a recent European cult that nationalists should reject as foreign.”
In my paper I will challenge claims made by Núñez and Borges and, drawing on Fernando Ortiz, I will examine cubanidad [Cubanness] as an essential element in the work of Miguel Barnet. Finally, drawing on the work of Lawrence Venuti, I will demonstrate how a foreignizing strategy functions not only as a transmitter of that Cubanness but also as a form of antihegemonic resistance.
Biography:
I am an assistant professor of Spanish Translation at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and freelance literary translator. My translations include Sergio Pitol’s The Art of Flight, The Journey, and The Magician of Vienna, Elena Poniatowska’s The Heart of the Artichoke, and Luis Jorge Boone’s The Cannibal Night, as well as dozens of short stories and essays by other Spanish and Latin American authors, including Andrés Neuman, Miguel Barnet, Alberto Chimal, Leonardo Padura, and Juan Villoro. I am also a contributing editor for World Literature Today and translation editor for Latin American Literature Today.