Aronson O.V. Translation and Politics. Schmitt, Benjamin and... Dostoevsky

Abstract: The subject of the present research article is the relationship between politics and translation as they have been formed in Russia. Special attention is paid to the political idea of 'invasion' of a text into culture through translation. The aforesaid idea opposes to the idea of mutual enrichment of cultures. Analyzing polemics evolving around Russian translations of writings by one of Nazi theorists Carl Schmitt, the author of the article points at the theory of cultural translation that can be implicitly found in Dostoevsky's works and Benjamin's concept of absolute translability that allows to better understand why it is Russia where Smitt's political ideas turned out to be in such demand. The research article is based on the immanentist methodology that defines the scope of a common political and cultural action and, as a result, allows to view the idea of translation from the point of view of political theories and translation concepts that may provide much material for better understanding of the political. The main result of the research is the author's discovery of the political unconscious existing in each translated text as well as the political desire expressed in a certain selection of these or those texts and authors to be iconic, especially those that express ideas and values alien to a particular culture. 

Keywords: