Disciplinary discourses at the interface between translation studies and activism have been traditionally dominated by 'structuralist' perspectives (Pérez-González 2010). Activist translation has therefore tended to be conceptualised as a set of counter-hegemonic practices of mediation invariably associated with written texts, and undertaken by aggrieved constituencies clustered around essentialist categories of identity politics. But the advent of digital culture has brought about a re-politicisation of the dialectic between hegemony and resistance which has led 'to an increased interest in personal self-expression of citizens as a political act' (Kaun et al. 2016: 1). This presentation explores how agencies of audiovisual translation activism in the digital culture are being reconfigured as networked, participatory sites of intervention where ordinary people engage in complex negotiations of cultural identity and citizenship. Drawing on Beasley-Murray's (2010) theorisation of posthegemony, I argue that such forms of activism typify the ongoing shift from representative to deliberative models of public participation in neoliberal societies where the dissolution of the state has resulted in a diffuse ubiquity of politics. Examples will be offered to demonstrate some of the ways in which affective intensities – rather than transcendent notions of ideological representation – are providing the impetus for the proliferation of such digital activist formations. In light of these developments, structuralist perpectives on translation activism are bound to be gradually superseded by 'generative' approaches, where the role of agency is foregrounded against that of structures. [Go to the full record in the library's catalogue]
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