Zwischen Berg und Ebene: Zur Entstehung von Vilém Flussers Begriffspaar Dialog/Diskurs - Tra montagna e pianura: come è nata la coppia di concetti dialogo/discorso di Vilém Flusser
This essay attempts a genealogic reconstruction of Vilém Flusser’s fundamental conceptual pair dialogue/discourse that he developed in the early 1970s. From 1973 to 1975, Edith and Vilém Flusser lived between Merano – where they generally spent the winter reading, discussing, taking walks and relaxing – and the Loire region in France where they spent the summer of 1973 and 1974. This nomadic existence between the mountain valley of Alto Adige/Südtirol and the plains of France prompted Flusser to develop a double vision of culture and communication based on two different geographical settings. Dialogues take place above all in valleys and discourses predominate in the plains. Between the two, there is a constant exchange that recalls Flusser’s own existence in these years.
Translating Space: On Rivers, Seas, Archipelagos and Straits
This paper explores possible convergences between translation and geography focusing on a series of spatial metaphors that try to break free from the simple idea of separation and opposition. Languages are viewed not as radically differing self-contained cultural continents existing on separate shores or riverbanks but as moving and constantly intermingling currents and heterogeneous interlinked archipelagos. Instead of the metaphor of the river that has to be crossed in the course of translation, the paper focuses above all on the metaphor of the strait which stresses the very difficulties of translation highlighting the absence of any easy binary division.