Against Translation is a text by American poet Kenneth Goldsmith (born 1961) published in eight volumes--English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Japanese, Russian and Arabic. The author discusses the impasses and shortcomings of translation and the virtures of an unapologetic linguistic “displacement.” “Translation is the ultimate humanist gesture,” he states. “Polite and reasonable, it is an overly cautious bridge builder ... in the end, it always fails, for the discourse it sets forth is inevitably off-register.” Displacement, by contrast, never explains itself. Goldsmith cites the example of Mexican-American poet Mónica de la Torre, who, in the middle of a presentation at a 2010 poetics conference at Columbia, “broke out, full on, for ten minutes entirely in Spanish, leaving all those who pay lip service to multilingualism and diversity angry because they couldn’t understand what she was saying. De la Torre thereafter resumed her talk in English, never mentioning her intervention … Comprehension is optional; displacement is concretely demonstrative.”
PUBLISHER Jean Boîte Éditions
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 8 vols, 3.5 x 5.5 in. / 256 pgs.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 9/27/2016 Active
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2016 p. 160
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9782365680127FLAT40 List Price: $49.00 CAD $65.00
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Published by Jean Boîte Éditions. Text by Kenneth Goldsmith.
I used to be an artist; then I became a poet; then a writer. Now when asked, I simply refer to myself as a word processor, Kenneth Goldsmith (born 1961) writes in Theory. The acclaimed conceptual poet, who is the founder and editor of UbuWeb, a professor of Uncreative Writing at the University of Pennsylvania and the former host of a weekly radio show at WFMU, was also appointed MoMA's very first Poet Laureate in 2013. Goldsmith may be a word processor, but he has also proven to be a highly influential literary figure over the past two decades. His latest publication, Theory, is a series of 500 texts—from poems to aphoristic thoughts to short stories—published on 500 sheets of paper and gathered unbound as a paper ream. This artist's book is the first of Goldsmith's publications to consolidate his diverse practices—from the radio to the Internet to his "uncreative" writing—in a single volume.
PUBLISHER Jean Boîte Éditions
BOOK FORMAT Unbound pages, 8.25 x 11.5 in. / 500 pgs / illustrated throughout.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 6/23/2015 Out of stock indefinitely
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2015
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9782365680103SDNR30 List Price: $30.00 CAD $40.00
In a letter to Documenta 13's head of publications, poet Kenneth Goldsmith narrates the evolution of his career from the founding of UbuWeb in 1996 to his DJ activities on WFMU and the inception of “uncreative writing” and conceptual poetry.
Kenneth Goldsmith: Theory
Kenneth Goldsmith: Letter to Bettina Funcke