Translation of deconstructivism in the Romanian post-communist transition interval

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the 90s, after the fall of the communist regime, Romania underwent a period of enthusiasm in the cultural and editorial sphere. Editors and translators attempted to cover the intellectual gap left by the late nationalist-communist regime between national book distribution in Romania and the cultural forerunners of post-structuralist thought. This paper shows how Jacques Derrida’s work, when translated into Romanian, reveals the material conditions of translation policies during the early stages of enthusiastic cultural practices in post-communism. My analysis shows that the fast-forward policy of translation during the early 90s, combined with the lack of academic and institutional support, failed to introduce deconstruction to a larger audience and to accommodate it to the local theoretical field. I also investigate the felicity conditions of theoretical transfer in the case of deconstruction, which was marginalized in the Romanian intellectual field. Additionally, I demonstrate how the circulation of texts in the form of translation triggers intellectual interventions in the public sphere.