A Zombie Theory of Translation: Or, What Is a ’Revenant’ Translation?

In ’Des Tours de Babel’ Jacques Derrida brilliantly deconstructs Benjamin’s 1923 essay, but in ’What is a ’Relevant’ Translation?’ his wording suggestively hints at the possibility that Benjamin sees the source text dying and returning to life as the translation, in which only the body (not the mind, not the spirit, not the sense) of the source text survives. Smash these two brilliant theorists’ ideas together and arguably what emerges is a zombie theory of translation: zombies, after all, are mindless embodied revenants. If we shift Derrida’s titular question slightly, and ask ＂What is a ’Revenant’ Translation?＂, one radical answer would be that it is a zombie translation. To that end this Element not only theorizes the six million Holocaust Shylock-zombies but explores that theme narratively, in a 5,000-word short story interwoven with the 20,000-word article.