The stranger loops of translation: Responding to Douglas Robinson

Kobus Marais

doi:10.4312/stridon.2.2.95-110

Authors

Kobus Marais University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4312/stridon.2.2.95-110

Keywords:

idealism, realism, constructivism, hermeneutics, semiotics

Abstract

This paper responds to criticism of some of my work by Douglas Robinson. After pointing out some factual problems in his response, I agree with Robinson that my 2014 views on agency and complexity can be expanded, and show how I have done so since then. I then engage with the kind of hermeneutics Robinson uses in his response to my work, arguing that it is a contextless, affect-driven hermeneutics that bases too much of its argument on matters of identity. I try to explain what I find problematic with constructivist arguments, and to offer a complexity approach that overcomes the binary between idealism and realism. I also question Robinson’s claim that he needs to ‘correct’ me where I am ‘wrong’, relating this strange loop in his hermeneutics to his own epistemological stance.

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