Theorizing Women’s Transnational Literatures: Shaping New Female Identities in Europe through Writing and Translation

Abstract

The first section of the paper aims at outlining the specificity of women’s critical contributions to transnational literatures and translation debates. Comparative Studies and Translation Studies are undergoing a phase of methodological rethinking and of discussion on disciplinary borders. It is a moment of great change implicit in a new perspective that wants to take into account a ‘global’ vision on the state of art of these two research areas. This awareness is born from the idea that the canonical division between literary/cultural studies and translation is not acceptable anymore, because translation is nowadays a hermeneutical category important to understand the complexity of the world. A research area that seems to unite this new notion of comparatism and translation is that of “Transnational Literatures/Cultures”, where the term ‘trans’ outlines, not only the passage among cultures, literatures and languages, but also the overcoming of national borders. The second section concentrates on Women scholars’ critical writing about “Transnational Feminisms” trying to underline their main issues. The first one is to combine theoretical analysis with political praxis and teaching to establish theories and practices which refute prevalent power structures of patriarchy, empire and globalization. The second issue is to encourage a transdisciplinary methodology and the necessity to find innovative knowledge paradigms and a new terminology. The third issue is the need to highlight the problem of ethics and responsibility.