Translating French Thought for Latin America and the Caribbean: The Case of the Cuban Journal Casa de las Américas

Abstract

Historically, intellectual projects in Latin America and the Caribbean have frequently been founded on and nourished by translated narratives. As an ongoing practice in periodicals and in print culture at large, translation was at the core of numerous twentieth-century intellectual and editorial projects in Latin America and the Caribbean. This paper is part of a project aimed to trace translation in the Latin American intellectual field focusing on the translation praxis of influential literary and cultural periodicals. Here I focus specifically on the translations of texts by French intellectuals published in the Cuban Revista Casa de las Américas (1960-present). I start out offering an overview of the translation praxis of Revista Casa, briefly contrast it to that two of its predecessors—Orígenes and Ciclón—, and then focus on the translation of texts from French in Revista Casa, mainly between the sixties and the eighties, years of heated cultural and political debates in Latin America in which the role of this periodical was central. I underscore the fact that Revista Casa’s translation praxis departed from that of most periodicals in the Americas, specifically in regard to prevalent trends that privileged authors considered under what has come to be called “French Theory”. I end by discussing the strategic role of translation in Revista Casa to advance a Latin American- and Caribbean-focused vision and participate in the creation of decolonial intellectual cartographies for a reconfigured Latin American and Caribbean imaginary. I comment on the relevance of studying these cases as a way not only of documenting the past but of searching for possibilities for increased bibliodiversity in the twenty-first century.