The Surreptitious Speech: Présence Africaine and the Politics of Otherness, 1947–1987 ed. by V. Y. Mudimbe (review)

Book R eviews with every literary work. Each man sets down the concepts he reached after translating or studying translation. (Although four of the translators of these selections are women, there are no women represented among the authors.) In short, it is a good corollary textbook: eclectic selections conveniently brought together in an attractive paperback format accom­ panied by an accessible, ideologically neutral introduction and a sound, impartial bibli­ ography. (I myself began using it as a corollary textbook as soon as it was available.) Why, then, has this well-designed anthology which does exactly what it sets out to do aroused so much caviling and carping? This is because, through no fault of the editors, it sets up false expectations. In the first place Schulte and Biguenet’s The Craft o f Translation (Univ. of Chicago, 1989) is so stellar. Nine leading U.S. translators wrote or revised essays especially for the anthology. Such contemporary master-translators like Gregory Rabassa, Margaret Sayers Peden, William Weaver conceptualized their actual practice. Somehow the theoretical counterpart was expected to move back through time but stay somehow just as complete. Lack of completeness lies behind a second complaint heard: it cannot be complete, without becoming encyclopedic. Teachers and graduate students are offended by excerpts, which seem pre-digested. E.g., what I think is original in Derrida’s 1980 position paper is several pages past the excerpt. On the other hand, while Benjamin’s “ The Task of the Translator” is complete, it is profitably read in conjunction with other Benjamin pieces, “ On Language as Such and on the Language of Man,” in particular. Indeed, there is actually a dialectic, since Derrida was partly responding to Steiner’s interpretation of Benjamin in After Babel which partially accounts for the playful remarks on “ Babel” etymology. Further, Schogt is persuasive, but he hardly has the authority of the absent Antoine Berman. Riffaterre’s essay could have been omitted altogether. (I would have replaced it with an essay by either Peden or Suzanne Jill Levine.) Finally, there is the question of the anthology audience. To speak from two semesters and a summer of use, I see this anthology serving systematic self-instruction. Someone moving into the field will see here that translations and translation norms move in pre­ dictable ricochets along a spectrum from text to audience and back again. I can well imagine that space restrictions and copyright and permissions imbroglios had more to do with the selection than the editors were happy with. We should be thankful that they managed to get so much in one book. M a r i l y n G a d d i s R o s e Binghamton University (SUNY) V. Y. Mudimbe, ed. T h e S u r r e p t i t i o u s S p e e c h : P r é s e n c e A f r i c a i n e a n d t h e P o l i t i c s o f O t h e r n e s s , 1947-1987. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1992. Pp. xxvi + 463. The title of this very mixed collection is not immediately comprehensible. Christopher Miller, in a summary of the essays, suggests that Alioune Diop, the founder of Présence Africaine, felt he had to use “ surreptitious speech,” in order not to push beyond acceptable limits when asking for support for the study of black culture in 1947. His journal, Diop said, was to stress universal humanism, to examine the relationship between Europe and the rest of the world, taking Africa merely as a test case! Diop, in fact, always stressed univer­ sal values, and wanted to praise the accomplishments of African civilization without engag­ ing in controversy. He tended to avoid direct criticism of Europe and, later, of independent African regimes. The subtitle of this volume, however, referring to “ otherness,” seems only a nod at fashionable theory, with limited relevance to the more interesting essays. Vo l . XXXIII, No. 4 105 l ’esprit C réateur The collection is addressed to the student of African literature and culture, and of the...