Introduction: Translating and interpreting linguistic and cultural differences in a migrant era

Abstract

In Metamorphoses (2002), Rosi Braidotti argues that those who do not like complexities cannot possibly feel at home in the third millennium; and in Transpositions (2006) she expands this idea with the notion of “transposition”, a term which indicates (Braidotti 2006: 7): An intertextual, cross-boundary or transversal transfer, in the sense of a leap from one code, field or axis into another, not merely in the quantitative mode of plural multiplications, but rather in the qualitative sense of complex multiplicities. It is not just a matter of weaving together different strands, variations on a theme [...], but rather of playing the positivity of difference as a specific theme of its own. Transpositions are in-between spaces “of zigzagging and of crossing: nonlinear, but not chaotic; nomadic, yet accountable and committed; creative but also cognitively valid; discursive and also materially embedded – it is coherent without falling into instrumental rationality” (Braidotti 2006: 7). ‘Trans-’ implies translation, movement, a nonunitary, complex, paradoxical and contradictory vision of life. This is, one could say, the main aim of this monographic issue