{"id":1782,"date":"2011-01-24T22:13:33","date_gmt":"2011-01-24T20:13:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=114"},"modified":"2011-01-24T22:13:33","modified_gmt":"2011-01-24T20:13:33","slug":"on-bibliographical-schizophrenia-how-come-id-never-heard-of-gilles-lipovetsky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2011\/01\/24\/on-bibliographical-schizophrenia-how-come-id-never-heard-of-gilles-lipovetsky\/","title":{"rendered":"ON BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SCHIZOPHRENIA (HOW COME I\u2019D NEVER HEARD OF GILLES LIPOVETSKY?)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\tYes, I\u2019m still marking students\u2019 exercises, no teaching to do, which means I\u2019m reading for pleasure texts I needn\u2019t prepare for class. This time it\u2019s been the turn of Gilles Lipovetsky\u2019s simply excellent La felicidad parad\u00f3jica<\/em> (2006), which I picked up because a colleague in my research group (\u2018Body and Textuality,\u2019 beautifully coordinated by Meri Torras) happened to mention him in passing as a fundamental name, in the same way I\u2019d name Michel Foucault. <\/p>\n

I am awfully ignorant of too many things but it worried me particularly that I\u2019d never heard of Lipovetsky (a French philosopher like Foucault, by the way \u2013um, maybe you knew?), as this sounded like a really glaring omission. I think I understand the problem better now (I still acknowledge my bottomless ignorance!): the academic world is tightly divided into different language communities, one (to which I belong as an English Studies specialist) uses for theorising bibliography almost exclusively and originally in English, the other (i.e. Spanish academia, to which I belong only secondarily) depends on theory mainly translated from English and, yes, to the same extent from French. Um, theory originally written in Spanish occupies, this is my feeling, a secondary place in our own territory. Our fault?<\/p>\n

Here it is: I know Foucault because he\u2019s been translated into English and profusely quoted; I didn\u2019t know about Lipovetsky because only two of his books have been translated, I assume that with little impact as I\u2019ve never come across a quotation from them in English (have I??). In contrast, Anagrama has published practically all of Lipovetsky\u2019s works in Spanish; some, like the one I\u2019ve read, are even included in their popular \u2018Compactos\u2019 collection. See the paradox at work. Check the English-speaking Wikipedia page on Lipovetsky… and it sends you to the Spanish version for more info!! Amazing. Check www.worldcat.org<\/a> and you\u2019ll see that, again atypically, of the 98 items cited under his name only 6 are in English (26 in Spanish… and only 23 in French!). <\/p>\n

This, of course, needn\u2019t mean much but, to me, it is essential proof of how badly knowledge circulates across language barriers even in the 21st century. It\u2019s not only that there\u2019s a noticeable time lag because of translation needs but also that whole areas fail to permeate other areas. Dialogue doesn\u2019t really happen. Thus, entering the multidisciplinary research group I belong has plunged me into an enriching but also bewildering bibliographical schizophrenia. I find myself using bibliography in English to write my papers in Spanish because there is no equivalent in Spanish, either translated or original, yet I wonder how many Lipovetskys I don\u2019t know about (and I should, from a Spanish point of view). Quite a mess. Maybe I should start again all over and take a degree in \u2018Teor\u00eda de la Literatura\u2019 \u2013I wish I could, as it\u2019s vanished from the UAB.<\/p>\n

You might think that access to English makes you properly cosmopolitan but I often believe it\u2019s the opposite: it makes you provincial, as what happens in, say, France or Germany, doesn\u2019t exist without translation into English and what happens in Spanish simply doesn\u2019t exist. I won\u2019t even mention Catalan \u2013 there we go again: I just did.<\/p>\n

I can hear you groan… \u2018What! you didn\u2019t know about Lipovetksy? Shame on you…\u2019 Yes, indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, I\u2019m still marking students\u2019 exercises, no teaching to do, which means I\u2019m reading for pleasure texts I needn\u2019t prepare for class. This time it\u2019s been the turn of Gilles Lipovetsky\u2019s simply excellent La felicidad parad\u00f3jica (2006), which I picked up because a colleague in my research group (\u2018Body and Textuality,\u2019 beautifully coordinated by Meri […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,18],"tags":[408],"class_list":["post-1782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-studies","category-general","tag-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1782\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}