Total performance

Abstract

Emerging in the 1960s, ethnopoetics sought to bridge the gap between ethnography and poetry in presenting indigenous oral literatures from around the world to contemporary US audiences. Jerome Rothenberg, a leading figure of the movement, developed a set of innovative translation techniques based on a perceived affinity between oral literature and the formal experiments of European and American avant-gardes. This paper discusses Rothenberg's search for universal forms and themes across widely divergent cultures and times, arguing that his translations of oral literature subvert the universalizing tendencies of his critical work and assert the irreducible difference of the source texts. They do so by emphasizing the moment of performance unique to each text. Rather than providing a transcript of a hypothetical performance, Rothenberg's translations enact a performance of their own with the use of avant-garde techniques adopted from concrete, visual and sound poetry.

Keywords:

• ethnopoetics
• Jerome Rothenberg
• avant-garde poetry
• oral literature
• performance
• reflexive translation

Notes

1. Since the 1970s, the search for an accurate and politically correct term capable of replacing the concept of the primitive became a regular feature of primitivism. Although the term is shot through with racism and colonialism, it has been difficult to replace and continues to be used in present-day scholarship, albeit as a purely historical descriptor (see, for example, Flam and Deutch 2003, 1).

2. In the second edition of Shaking the Pumpkin, Rothenberg changes the designation to “version”, perhaps in response to Clements's criticism. The second edition of Technicians, however, identifies it simply as a translation but includes one more source: the French Trésor de la Poésie Universelle (Caillois and Lambert 1958).

3. As Steve McCaffery and bpNichol (1992, 52) point out, Rothenberg's total translation is not to be confused with J.C. Catford's concept bearing the same name. Catford's definition, being restricted to lexis and grammar, is narrower than Rothenberg's.