DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: NATIONAL IDENTITY

Here are some issues we covered in our Team Esperanto meeting, which Stephen summarizes below:

The idea of a national identity also brings up another question I would like to briefly address --

(please consider the following as a prompt for discussion in class)

With the 'New European Poets' text, it is evident that we will be addressing the question of translation throughout the semester -- lacking both the original texts and polyglots in the classroom, certain lines will always elicit the question: is x oddity the result of an apt translation or is it simply a mistake? Should such a question even be considered in making a value-judgment regarding any of the poems in the text? If we enjoy or dislike a particular poem should it affect that original reading of the poem if we come to discover that the translation is one of a heavy-handed, careless nature?

Not only are we faced with a book that is entirely comprised of translations, but it is also a book organized by nation-states. Self-evident questions arise: what is a nation-state? what is a boundary? what is the purpose of organizing a book in such a way? in what ways is it misleading? is every nation like Switzerland as I previously described it (accurately, I hope) -- is a statement such as "it is impossible to make generalizations about a nation?" accurate?

And then there is the postmodern, postcolonial context to consider. We found it interesting that, in the 'France' section, the editors made an effort to represent the immigrant, North African voice in France while in the Spanish unit, for example, we hear the voice of a British immigrant and not a Moroccan...

I have been searching for a theoretical-excerpt from something to bolster this -- if I do manage to find something, I will post it on Monday, so check back if you wish -- for now I think this ought to suffice...