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Article published In: Translation in times of technocapitalism
Edited by Stefan Baumgarten and Jordi Cornellà-Detrell
[Target 29:2] 2017
► pp. 222–243

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Foucault in English

The politics of exoticization

 | Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Published online: 29 June 2017
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.29.2.02ben
It is something of a cliché to affirm that translations into English are almost always domestications, privileging fluency and naturalness over fidelity to the source text. However, back in the 1970s, many of Michel Foucault’s major texts, which were introduced to the English-speaking public for the first time through Alan Sheridan Smith’s translations for Tavistock Publications, were not domesticated at all. Despite the fact that the originals are grounded in a non-empiricist theory of knowledge and use terms drawn from a universe of discourse that would have been completely alien in the English-speaking world, these translations closely follow the patterns of the French, with few or no concessions to the target reader’s knowledge and expectations. This paper analyses passages from Sheridan Smith’s English translations of Les Mots et les choses and L’Archéologie du savoir in order to discuss the long-term effects of this translation strategy. It then goes on to compare and assess two very different translations of Foucault’s lecture L’ Ordre du discours (Michel Foucault. 1970. L’Ordre du discours. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), an early one by Rupert Swyer Translated by Rupert Swyer as “Orders of Discourse.” Social Science Information 10 (2) [1971]: 7–30. Reprinted as “Discourse on Language” as appendix to The Archaeology of Knowledge . Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, which brings the text to the English reader, and a later one by Translated by Ian McLeod as “The Order of Discourse.” In Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader, ed. by Robert Young, 51–78. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, which obliges the reader to go to the text. The paper concludes by reiterating the need for Anglophone academic culture to open up to foreign perspectives, and suggests, following Goethe (Book of West and East, Goethe, Johann W. (1819) 2002. “Translations.” From West-Östlicher Divan . Translated by Douglas Robinson. In Western Translation Theory from Herodotus to Nietzsche. 2nd ed., ed. by Douglas Robinson, 222–224. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) that new epistemes are best introduced gradually in order to avoid alienating or confusing a public that might not be ready for them.
Article outline
  • 1.Michel Foucault – A ‘difficult’ writer?
  • 2.The perils of foreignization
  • 3.Phased translation
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Addendum
  • Notes
  • References
References (58)
References
Works by Michel Foucault
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