Translation and Symbolic Capital in the Era of Globalization: French Literature in the United States

Abstract

The discourse about the ‘death of French literature’ which has spread throughout the Anglo-American publishing industry since the 1990s raises the question of the conditions required for a dominant national literature to maintain its symbolic capital in the era of globalization. This discourse is a sell-fulfilling prophecy used as a weapon in the international competition and struggles within the world market of translation in a context of accrued economic constraints. The present article first confronts discourse to practice through ohHan empirical study of the circulation of French literature in the United States in the era of globalization, based on a quantitative analysis of all the literary titles translated from French in the United States between 1990 and 2003, on interviews with publishers and translators, and on archives. The symbolic capital of French literature appears to be founded not only on its past achievements (classics) but also on its present production, which accounts for 40% of the translations. Although most are novels, upmarket genres like poetry and theatre are better represented than commercial genres. The data also displays the growing diversity of translated authors, regarding gender and nationality. However, the high centralization of the publishing field in the Francophone area impacts the circulation pattern: most translated works were published in Paris. The article then turns to analyse the structure of the American publishing field, using Bourdieu’s opposition between small-scale and large-scale production: French literature is located at the pole of small-scale production, a factor that explains its growing invisibility. A network analysis displays three clusters of publishers: large conglomerates who prefer to reprint classics, university presses engaged in the canonization of modern French literature, and small independent publishers investing in living writers. A by-product of the stiffening of commercial constraints on the publishing industry, the discourse on the ‘death of French literature’ paradoxically contributes to nourishing the well-founded fiction of national literatures. On the theoretical level, using world system analysis, field theory and the concept of symbolic capital helps explain isomorphism by imitation in the global market of translation.