The Stripped Fish: Translation and Culture in Mario Bellatin's Japanese Novellas

Mario Bellatin's Artistic Project

The Mexican-Peruvian author Mario Bellatin is currently one of Latin America's leading artists, whose literary work echoes the experiments of the avant-garde. Initially, he became known for his unconventional treatment of key figures from European conceptualism in the visual arts, and in particular for his references to Marcel Duchamp (for example, in El Gran Vidrio, 2007) and Joseph Beuys (in Lecciones para una liebre muerta, 2006).¹ As I will try to make clear, however, Bellatin adopts many other strategies to break through the stereotyped patterns of present-day artistic creation. One of these is the striking use of what Heather Cleary calls "the translational trope of textual reproduction" (123), which she considers characteristic of cultural production in Latin America, and of which pseudotranslation is a noticeable example.

Following the example of Andrea Cote-Botero, Bellatin's view of literary production can be described as "procedural," which comes down to the creative process itself being regarded as the most important artistic product, causing the latter to be subject to constant change. To Bellatin, artistic activity is all-encompassing and determines one's everyday life; therefore, there is no clear dividing line between his literary universe and his daily existence. Moreover, to him, making art transcends the literary field; rather, it is a powerful dynamic, an ambitious project, in which texts, visual material and public interventions come together into one great, constantly evolving performance.

In the last few years, Bellatin's work has become part of the transnational canon, anchored in a position that is both local and global. On the one hand, Latin America is indisputably his base and locus of enunciation: in 2000, he founded the Dynamic Writers School of Mexico City, which he ran until it closed in 2010. His distinctive ideas on literature were evident from the guidelines he gave his students: they were not allowed to write, in other words, were not allowed to produce texts, but had to restrict themselves to careful observation. He also works with visual artists from Latin America, such as Ximena Berecochea, who supplied the photographs for one of the novellas I will be discussing, Nagaoka Shiki. He writes first and foremost for a Latin American readership, and his books are dense with references to local figures and events. At the same time, he presents himself as an avid cosmopolitan who draws on many diverse cultural traditions, such as Sufism, Judaism, and Japanese literature. The result of this double positioning-both Latin American and international-is that Bellatin incorporates well-known themes in a completely new way and brings together the most diverse cultural references. An example of this is his 2005 text Lecciones para una liebre muerta (Lessons for a Dead Hare, translated by Daniel Alarcón in A Public Space, No. 5, 2008), in which Joseph Beuys appears with Bruce Lee, José María Arguedas, and a number of Peruvian danzaqs.

A question arises as to this author's position within the global literary market and the unequal division of symbolic capital that prevails there, more specifically in relation to the factors that determine which works are included in World Literature, such as the novels of Bolaño, to give a good Latin American example, and which ones are not (see Apter; Casanova; Hoyos). Although Bellatin resists being incorporated into the streamlined system of the World Republic of Letters, and his work is too idiosyncratic to fit into this system, he has managed to secure a place in a particular niche of World Literature that is somewhat comparable to that of the Argentine César Aira. A number of his works have already been translated into English by independent publishers, such as Salón de Belleza (Beauty Salon), Nagaoka Shiki: una nariz de ficción (Shiki Nagaoka: A Nose for Fiction), and Jacobo el Mutante (Jacob the Mutant), and there are more projects in the future. However, these English translations are only the tip of the iceberg as they concern translation to another language as a...