1st Edition

Derrida Translating Reconceptualising Literary and Philosophical Translation

By Kathryn Batchelor Copyright 2026
206 Pages
by Routledge

206 Pages
by Routledge

206 Pages
by Routledge

For decades, Translation Studies has struggled to engage with Jacques Derrida, whose radical questioning of language seemed to undermine translation theory's foundations. This book reveals a hidden dimension: Derrida's obsessive engagement with translation throughout his career. The text uncovers his "translation reflex" of constant pausing to question how concepts might be translated,... Read more

Acknowledgements

Presentation of citations

 

Introduction

1.     Derrida the Translator

2.     Translation, or Something Else

3.     Prowling

4.     Inheriting

5.     Mourning

 

Index

Biography

Kathryn Batchelor is Professor of Translation Studies at University College London. She is the author of Translation and Paratexts and Decolonizing Translation and has co-edited seven volumes including Translating Frantz Fanon across Continents and Languages and Translation-Trouvailles.

“Batchelor’s book solves the problem of what translation scholars are to do with Derrida. Her solution is so obvious, so simple, that we have long been unable to see it: study not what he says about translation but how he translates. In doing that, Batchelor tends to turn Derrida’s translation strategies back on him: she “harries” the Derridean translated word in very much the same way Derrida harries the German word. For those of us who love Derrida and wish he had been a better translation theorist, Batchelor’s book is essential reading.” 

-Professor Douglas Robinson, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

"A foremost theorist of translation, Kathryn Batchelor seeks to ‘reconceptualize literary and philosophical translation’ and to do that with the help of Derrida. She combs through his work very thoroughly looking less for what he says about translation than for what he does with it, for ‘Derrida translating’. With great acuity, she pulls out many ideas from this practice that deserve welcome in translation studies, to which this book makes a a major contribution, no less than to studies of Derrida."

-Peggy Kamuf, University of Southern California,US