Simona Bertacco

The Relocation of Culture is about accents and borders—about people and cultures that have accents and that cross borders. It is a book that deals with translation and nomadic identities, and with the many ways in which the increasing relevance of forced migrations has affected the practice of languages and the understanding of cultures in our times. Simona Bertacco and Nicoletta Vallorani examine the theoretical and practical nexus of translation and migration, two of the most visible and anxiety-producing keywords of our age, and use translation as the method for a global cultural theory firmly based in the humanities, both as creative output and interdisciplinary scholarship. Positioning their work within the field of translation studies with important borrowings from literary and cultural studies, visual and migration studies, the authors suggest a theory of translation that makes space for complexity, considers different “languages” (words, images, sounds, bodies), and takes into account both our emotional, pre-linguistic and instinctual reaction to the other as an invader and an enemy and the responsibility for the other that lies at the heart of translation. This process necessarily involves a reflection on the location and relocation of cultures in contemporary times.

The Relocation of Culture is about accents and borders—about people and cultures that have accents and that cross borders. It is a book that deals with translation and nomadic identities, and with the many ways in which the increasing relevance of forced migrations has affected the practice of languages and the understanding of cultures in our times. Simona Bertacco and Nicoletta Vallorani examine the theoretical and practical nexus of translation and migration, two of the most visible and anxiety-producing keywords of our age, and use translation as the method for a global cultural theory firmly based in the humanities, both as creative output and interdisciplinary scholarship. Positioning their work within the field of translation studies with important borrowings from literary and cultural studies, visual and migration studies, the authors suggest a theory of translation that makes space for complexity, considers different “languages” (words, images, sounds, bodies), and takes into account both our emotional, pre-linguistic and instinctual reaction to the other as an invader and an enemy and the responsibility for the other that lies at the heart of translation. This process necessarily involves a reflection on the location and relocation of cultures in contemporary times.

From the perspective of current regionalisms and deterritorializations, "Out of Place" offers a critical reading of the 'Centennial decade' in English-Canadian literature as it is reflected in the literary and critical writings of Robert Kroetsch. The aim of this study is twofold. It provides a close reading of the work of a writer who occupies that borderland between postmodernism and postcolonialism that seems to be so typically Canadian. And by drawing a line that links the concepts of territory, language and identity, it searches for an appropriate critical methodology for approaching that place called Canada, its many histories and languages, its myths. Kroetsch's work reveals the ultimate dismissal of the thematic quest for identity - a quest undertaken by Frye, Atwood, and others in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He, however, asserts the primacy of the notion of place as the" "starting point of his reflection on the experience of living and writing in Canada today. An interview with Robert Kroetsch closes the book.