Daniele Monticelli
I am currently a professor of translation studies and semiotics at Tallinn University. I hold an MA degree in philosophy (University of Milano, 1995), a PhD in semiotics (University of Tartu, 2008) and I have been a postdoctoral visiting fellow at the Department of Comparative Literature of Yale University (2013/14). I teach a range of subjects in contemporary Italian history, society and politics, philosophy of language, comparative literature, semiotics and research seminars for MA and PhD students in the humanities.
My research is characterized by a wide and interdisciplinary range of interests which include philosophy of language, translation history, literary semiotics, Italian studies and contemporary critical theory with particular focus on the political thought of Agamben, Badiou, Negri, Rancière and Žižek. My current research in translation history explores the potentialities and constraints of translation in contexts of radical cultural and social change with particular focus on the construction and deconstruction of national identities in Central and Eastern Europe at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, censorship and dissidence under communism and the contemporary debates on world literature and translation. My research in the field of semiotics has focused on Juri Lotman's later thought. I have developed Lotman's understanding of translation into a general framework for the study of translation and translators as agents of cultural change and seeded translation studies with concepts from poststructuralist and critical theory.
Since 2003 I have participated in several international research projects in the fields of linguistics, semiotics, translation studies and from 2010 to 2012 I have been the recipient of the Estonian Science Foundation’s research grant “Translators (Re)shaping Cultural Repertoire”. I am presently the recipient of the Estonian Research Council's grant "Translation in History, Estonia (1850-2010): Agents, Institutions, Practices and Texts". I have presented the results of my research on these topics in around 100 academic articles and been the initiator and co-editor of several special issues and collective volumes in five different languages published by both Estonian-based and international journals and publishers, including “Between Cultures and Texts. Itineraries in Translation History” (Peter Lang, 2011), "Translation Under Communism" (Palgrave, 2022) and “The Routledge Handbook of the History of Translation Studies” (2024).I have authored several translations of Estonian literature into Italian. I regularly publish reviews and essays on cultural journals and Estonian newspapers.
My research is characterized by a wide and interdisciplinary range of interests which include philosophy of language, translation history, literary semiotics, Italian studies and contemporary critical theory with particular focus on the political thought of Agamben, Badiou, Negri, Rancière and Žižek. My current research in translation history explores the potentialities and constraints of translation in contexts of radical cultural and social change with particular focus on the construction and deconstruction of national identities in Central and Eastern Europe at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, censorship and dissidence under communism and the contemporary debates on world literature and translation. My research in the field of semiotics has focused on Juri Lotman's later thought. I have developed Lotman's understanding of translation into a general framework for the study of translation and translators as agents of cultural change and seeded translation studies with concepts from poststructuralist and critical theory.
Since 2003 I have participated in several international research projects in the fields of linguistics, semiotics, translation studies and from 2010 to 2012 I have been the recipient of the Estonian Science Foundation’s research grant “Translators (Re)shaping Cultural Repertoire”. I am presently the recipient of the Estonian Research Council's grant "Translation in History, Estonia (1850-2010): Agents, Institutions, Practices and Texts". I have presented the results of my research on these topics in around 100 academic articles and been the initiator and co-editor of several special issues and collective volumes in five different languages published by both Estonian-based and international journals and publishers, including “Between Cultures and Texts. Itineraries in Translation History” (Peter Lang, 2011), "Translation Under Communism" (Palgrave, 2022) and “The Routledge Handbook of the History of Translation Studies” (2024).I have authored several translations of Estonian literature into Italian. I regularly publish reviews and essays on cultural journals and Estonian newspapers.
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In the last part of the volume the attempts at rethinking emancipative politics elaborated by three contemporary radical thinkers – Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière – are analyzed as theoretical procedures of political detotalization from both a systemic and a temporal point of view.
Translation history is part of both national and international history and culture. It provokes comparative thinking and involves the application of global theories to local practices. Responding to the need to focus attention on translation as an agent of culture and history, the articles in this collection develop contemporary debates in translation studies and also present fine case studies of translation history.
I saggi raccolti in questo volume interrogano con intento critico le prospettive teoriche attualmente impiegate nell’analisi della letteratura italiana e propongono una riflessione sulle categorie fondanti il metodo in letteratura. Al contempo, i vari approcci al testo (filologico, storico-critico, filosofico, semiotico, geocritico e antropologico) presentano al lettore un valido strumento comparativo volto a mettere in risalto il diretto valore conoscitivo dell’analisi intesa come concreta pratica ermeneutica. Il concetto chiave che regge le diverse analisi incluse nel volume è condensato nella domanda che ogni studioso di letteratura dovrebbe porsi: in cosa consiste la ‘letterarietà’ dei testi e come si ‘compone’ la testualità della letteratura? Le molteplici risposte degli autori di questo libro sono accomunate dal tentativo di prendere in carico uno specifico linguaggio descrittivo esplicitandone i fondamenti epistemologici. In questo senso, le prospettive qui applicate possono ritenersi pertinenti anche in ambiti che vanno al di là della sola letteratura italiana e acquistano validità in un campo come quello della teoria della cultura oggi sempre più interdisciplinare e globalizzato. In un panorama teorico e critico in cui il ‘paradigma disciplinare’ fa spesso capo a un unico impianto metodologico, Testo e metodo offre dunque al lettore analisi dei testi, problemi epistemologici e interazioni tra testi e cultura, una prospettiva teorica interdisciplinare che rifiuta posizioni sclerotizzate o opposizioni precostituite e auspica piuttosto il dialogo tra diversi approcci metodologici.
The article focuses on the different places of translation within the semio-sphere as a system of systems and its relations to the notion of border. It argues that in Lotman's theory, translation can function both as a homogenizing and a heterogenizing semiotic force, depending on its position at the center or the periphery of a given semiotic system. The first part of the article develops a theoretical argument on the relation between translation processes and cultural borders, which acquire different meanings and functions within Lotman's theory of the semiosphere corresponding to differently oriented kinds of translation. The second part of the article develops a close analysis of Giacomo Leopardi's poem "L'Infinito," where the tension and dialogue between the different functions of the Lotmanian borders and the different kinds of cultural translation become devices for the generation of new meanings. Finally, the article briefly considers the significance of Lotman's semiospheric understanding of the relation between borders and translation for contemporary translation and border studies.
In the last part of the volume the attempts at rethinking emancipative politics elaborated by three contemporary radical thinkers – Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière – are analyzed as theoretical procedures of political detotalization from both a systemic and a temporal point of view.
Translation history is part of both national and international history and culture. It provokes comparative thinking and involves the application of global theories to local practices. Responding to the need to focus attention on translation as an agent of culture and history, the articles in this collection develop contemporary debates in translation studies and also present fine case studies of translation history.
I saggi raccolti in questo volume interrogano con intento critico le prospettive teoriche attualmente impiegate nell’analisi della letteratura italiana e propongono una riflessione sulle categorie fondanti il metodo in letteratura. Al contempo, i vari approcci al testo (filologico, storico-critico, filosofico, semiotico, geocritico e antropologico) presentano al lettore un valido strumento comparativo volto a mettere in risalto il diretto valore conoscitivo dell’analisi intesa come concreta pratica ermeneutica. Il concetto chiave che regge le diverse analisi incluse nel volume è condensato nella domanda che ogni studioso di letteratura dovrebbe porsi: in cosa consiste la ‘letterarietà’ dei testi e come si ‘compone’ la testualità della letteratura? Le molteplici risposte degli autori di questo libro sono accomunate dal tentativo di prendere in carico uno specifico linguaggio descrittivo esplicitandone i fondamenti epistemologici. In questo senso, le prospettive qui applicate possono ritenersi pertinenti anche in ambiti che vanno al di là della sola letteratura italiana e acquistano validità in un campo come quello della teoria della cultura oggi sempre più interdisciplinare e globalizzato. In un panorama teorico e critico in cui il ‘paradigma disciplinare’ fa spesso capo a un unico impianto metodologico, Testo e metodo offre dunque al lettore analisi dei testi, problemi epistemologici e interazioni tra testi e cultura, una prospettiva teorica interdisciplinare che rifiuta posizioni sclerotizzate o opposizioni precostituite e auspica piuttosto il dialogo tra diversi approcci metodologici.
The article focuses on the different places of translation within the semio-sphere as a system of systems and its relations to the notion of border. It argues that in Lotman's theory, translation can function both as a homogenizing and a heterogenizing semiotic force, depending on its position at the center or the periphery of a given semiotic system. The first part of the article develops a theoretical argument on the relation between translation processes and cultural borders, which acquire different meanings and functions within Lotman's theory of the semiosphere corresponding to differently oriented kinds of translation. The second part of the article develops a close analysis of Giacomo Leopardi's poem "L'Infinito," where the tension and dialogue between the different functions of the Lotmanian borders and the different kinds of cultural translation become devices for the generation of new meanings. Finally, the article briefly considers the significance of Lotman's semiospheric understanding of the relation between borders and translation for contemporary translation and border studies.
Michael K, one of J. M. Coetzee’s most controversial novels, which
has provoked strong feelings and an intense debate among critics
since its publication in 1983. Scholarly works on the novel have
tended to explore the ethical dilemma raised by the enigmatic life
of the protagonist and his apparent unrelatedness with its “times”,
focusing on the issues of absolute alterity and its (un)
representability, while denying any political import to the novel.
These interpretations draw on a conformist understanding of
politics that transforms the social outsideness of Michael K into
his political irrelevance. The argument developed in this article
takes instead the reconceptualizations of (emancipatory) politics
by Jacques Rancière and Giorgio Agamben as a basis for a
thorough political reading of Michael’s outsideness. The notions of
“dissensus” and “inoperativity” help to disclose, behind Michael’s
apparently unpretentious life, a complex strategy aimed at
maintaining his distance from power, while keeping power itself
at a distance.
The article employs the theories of Derrida and Lotman as useful tools for deconstructing this understanding of cultural identity, which has recently become an ideological justification for socio-political conflicts. In fact, their theories spring from a thorough critique of the kind of internalizing self-enclosure which allowed Saussure to delimit and describe langue as the object of linguistics. The article identifies and compares the elements of this critique, focusing on Derrida’s and Lotman’s concepts of “mirror structure”, “binarism”, “numerousness”, “textuality” and “semiosphere”.
An understanding of mediation emerges which is not reducible to any kind of definitive acquisition, thereby frustrating the pretences of identity, constantly dislocating and deferring any attempt at semiotic self-enclosure. My comparison suggests that Lotman’s “translation of the untranslatable” (or “dialogue”) and Derrida’s différance can be con- sidered analogous descriptions of this problematic kind of mediation. The (de)construc- tive nature of culture, as described by Lotman and Derrida, challenges any attempt to view cultural formations as sources of rigid and irreducible identities or differences.
Sito del Congresso: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/conferences/italianistica-2.0.-tradizione-e-innovazione