Rethinking Relations between Comparative Literature and Translation Studies: Prolegomena to Interdisciplinary Poaching
This article explores the cultural and ideological assumptions underlying the principle metaphors forged during the last forty years by English-Canadian and Québécois scholars of Comparative Literature and Literary Translation Studies in an attempt to portray the relationship between Canada’s two “founding” literatures. It argues that such assumptions are partially responsible, on the one hand, for the difficulty these two disciplines have had in defining their respective boundaries and, on the other hand, for the “territorial” tensions that have constantly threatened their autonomy, indeed their very existence, both in Canada and elsewhere. In this perspective, particular attention is given to the “perverse effects” produced by many of these metaphors which, insofar as they tend to occult cultural diversity and difference, are unable to account for the current complexity of cultural borders and interdisciplinary relations, especially in the context of multilingual occidental societies. In an effort to overcome these shortcomings, the non-metaphorical concept of “poaching” recently defined by Québec critic Simon Harel is introduced as a more appropriate tool for describing—and maintaining—the creative conflictuality so vital to the survival of contiguous cultural and disciplinary spaces.