PJ Zaborowski

Note: This was originally written in October of 2023, for a SLIS assignment.

In a moment of candor during a recent chat over coffee, my department chair bemoaned the lack of attendance at recent campus events before turning his discerning gaze back upon me and saying, “Of course, this doesn’t apply to you. You probably attend too many events.” That is probably true; I’ve been to a lot of events on campus, but none have had quite the same impact upon me as last month’s lecture in the Senate Chamber of the Old Capitol Museum. On the twelfth of October, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak gave a talk entitled “Translation! Ever New, Ever Elusive” as the headlining event celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the University of Iowa’s literary translation program—a program which she founded during her 12 years as a professor at UIowa (1965-77). While her talk was not directly focused upon DEI, Spivak is one of the most important figures in Post-colonial theory and translation studies, and her essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” is perhaps the foundational work in the field. And, when she didn’t like her own answer to the question which the essay’s title poses, Spivak built seven schools in West Bengal where she regularly teaches elementary students (when she’s not busy with her day job at Columbia University).  As the blurb in the program for Spivak’s talk that night rightly points out, “Humanities for Social Justice is her passion. Translation is the medium of this work.”

Spivak’s talk began with a reflection of her time at the University of Iowa and the genesis of the literary translation program which she worked to establish. Given that a celebration of translation was the impetus for this event, I was initially surprised by Spivak’s assertion that translation is impossible, and that translators must be prepared for failure. However, Spivak’s rhetoric is every bit as sharp as her scholarship and I was convinced in short order. For Spivak, the very idea of original  translation is a fallacy. Translation, instead of mirroring the original, instead creates a new, phenomenal world, as real as the real world. It is an act in which the translator cannot consider the individual psyche, but must instead translate into connectivities other than our own—an act which the translator will inevitably fail at. But, it is in learning from those failures that translation actually occurs. Translation kills the phonic and therefore socio-cultural element of the text, and so we must be haunted by it. The translator must inhabit the original, but cannot ever truly reproduce it. Spivak also pointed out flaws in one of Academe’s favorite hot topics: decolonization. In Spivak’s eyes, true decolonization had not been achieved, or even attempted. Translation has the potential for decolonization, but, as Spivak rightly points out, most post-colonial texts are translated into imperial languages. 

Spivak’s talk was not geared towards libraries, yet I found that it resonated with me on multiple levels. As DEI initiatives have been implemented across the country, it has become evident that the process of creating a diverse and equitable environment is one which will require a long period of continual failure to enact. Unlike Spivak’s theory of translation, I don’t think DEI is an impossibility. But, while progress has been made in transforming libraries into more inclusive spaces, the library profession is still disproportionately white. These failures should not be hidden or swept under the rug, but instead—as Spivak might advise us—we should embrace and learn from these failures. Spivak’s thoughts on translation also seem relevant for special collections and archives, many of which have historically not collected items related to minority and indigenous populations. Curators and special collections workers can “translate” collections which have excluded those populations to tell their stories through their archival exclusion. It may fail, but it is work worth doing. 

Spivak’s lecture raised many questions for me about how libraries can better service the subaltern and tell their stories. How can libraries continue to become more inclusive spaces for immigrant, migrant, and refugees in our community? How can archivists incorporate oral histories and advice from minority communities to better tell stories which our collections alone cannot tell? How can librarians reduce the primacy of the English language in libraries? These questions all continually circulate through my brain as I consider applying for jobs in archival spaces. I would love to one day curate an exhibit which tells the story of indigenous peoples, in which the archival materials on display tell the story of dispossession from the indigenous perspective and an indigenous language—which is then translated into English, as a secondary act. I have no doubt that such an exhibition would inevitably fail,  but it seems the sort of failure which we all could learn from.