(Re)constructing the urban palimpsest of Lemberg/Lwów/Lviv: A case study in the politics of cultural translation in East Central Europe

Abstract

Today's Western Ukrainian city of Lviv, situated at a historical junction of multiple imperial transfers and diverse linguistic and cultural spaces, constitutes a representative case study in urban cultural translation. This article considers the methodological implications of cultural translation and analyses post-1991 textual and non-textual discourses about the city. It examines processes of translation of Lviv's cultural identity for different audiences while exploring both internal/domestic and external translatorial perspectives and the power relations underlying respective positionalities. The article argues that these translational practices, mediated by a range of agents, contribute to an ongoing reinterpretation of the city's ambivalent geopolitical position. The case study interrogates the asymmetrical binarism of the postcolonial and cosmopolitan theoretical paradigms and locates the event of cultural translation in the negotiation of linguistic and cultural interstices.