Description
Book SynopsisIn
Motherless Tongues Vicente L. Rafael examines the vexed relationship between language and history as seen through the work of translation in the context of empire, revolution, and academic scholarship in the Philippines, the United States, and beyond.
Trade Review"Vincente Rafael's latest work,
Motherless Tongues, brings an innovative perspective to the field of translation studies." -- Marianna Deganutti * Target *
"Motherless Tongues is a revelatory and lucid rejection of the delusions of control of language flows implicit in the work of many a translation studies scholar. Amidst the continued hegemony of research moulded by the reassuring stability of different types of social and ideological structures, Rafael’s superbly written book illuminates the counterpoint: translation as site for the everyday expression of dissent, subversion and insurgency." -- Luis Pérez-González * The Translator *
“Motherless Tongues not only demonstrates what a rich ecosystem the Philippines is for thinking through translation, but also offers a new and productive way to think about the relationship between translation and language.”
-- Jessica Gross * Journal of Asian Studies *
“Among the most notable aspects of the author’s approach in
Motherless Tongues is that it is scholarly, theoretically vivid, and, at the same time, deeply personal. . . . The world of
Motherless Tongues is encouraging to a degree that is, perhaps, even beyond the author’s intentions stated at the outset.” -- William B. Noseworthy * Pacific Affairs *
“An excellent collection. . . . Rafael demonstrates that translation is a versatile and complex concept capable of producing both broad generalizations and intricately detailed historical arguments.” -- Lanny Thompson * Journal of American History *
"[Rafael] is a perspicacious observer of culture whose discernments constantly open up new vistas." -- Ilan Stavans * Latin American Research Review *
"
Motherless Tongues offers much to literary scholarship by way of its complex and detailed historiography. It places hegemonic and nonhegemonic languages in the same zone, street, and classroom to insist that there is always another story, another example. In doing so, it makes a strong case for limber models of literary scholarship that respond to multilingual zones of translation." -- Akshya Saxena * Cultural Critique *
"In this extraordinary collection of essays, anthropologist and historian Vicente L. Rafael offers the reader a fast-paced tour of the complex relationship between language, history, colonization, and war. . . . Rafael goes to considerable lengths to illustrate how the dexterity of language and the agility of translation are enormous assets, impervious to taming and domestication. He thinks like a poet and writes like a politician, fusing the best of oratorical forms to a rhetorical parsimony that ensures that his work is always an absolute pleasure to read." -- Mark Turin * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments xi
Introduction. The Aporia of Translation 1
Part I. Vernacularizing the Political
1. Welcoming What Comes: Translating Sovereignty in the Revolutionary Philippines 21
2. Wars of Translation: American English, Colonial Schooling,and Tagalog Slang 43
3. The Cell Phone and the Crowd: Messianic Politics in the EDSA II Uprising 70
Part II. Weaponizing Babel
4. Translation, American English, and the National Insecurities of Empire 99
5. Targeting Translation: Counterinsurgency and the Weaponization of Language 120
Part III. Translating Lives
6. The Accidents of Area Studies: Benedict Anderson and Arjun Appadurai 149
7. Contracting Nostalgia: On Renato Rosaldo 162
8. Language, History, and Autobiograhy: Becoming Reynaldo Ileto 173
9. Interview:
Translation Speaks with Vicente Rafael 189
Notes 203
Bibliography 233
Index 247
