Theory in (Non)Translation. On French Theory in the GDR

The history of French Theory is routinely depicted as an exclusively Western European and North American phenomenon. Yet in the state-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, authors such as Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, Foucault, Deleuze, or Derrida were read, discussed, and translated as avidly as in the ›West‹, even if many of these translations only circulated illegally. Due to the region’s history of structuralist theory, in many cases, this began even earlier than in the US, Italy, or West Germany. The only outlier, in this regard, was East Germany where not even one of these authors’ texts was translated prior to 1990. What circulated instead, were scarce West German editions as well as highly fragmented and often incorrectly reproduced excerpts. The GDR case thus shows that non-translation is not necessarily a consequence of institutional and political restrictions, but must also be considered in the context of the (unofficial) availability and linguistic accessibility of translations that have been produced elsewhere. The lecture discusses this, drawing on various samizdat journals such as Anschlag and Ariadnefabrik, as well as on the anthologies Aisthesis and Kopfbahnhof which conceptualized their compilatory practices as being epistemologically on par with translation and, thus, in and of itself, genuine modes of doing theory.