Translating, repositioning, reframing: On the transatlantic routes of objects and memories

Abstract

Methods, objects and subjects My contribution to this forum on “Practices of Belonging” has a double focus. On the one hand, it concentrates on the multiple trajectories that histories of migration trace as they cross and re-cross the Atlantic, connecting the history of Italy and the US, in particular, via the stories of multiple departures and returns. On the other, it asks what it means to research material which is close to one’s own subjective experience and personal history, or what “positionality” means when we are faced with the political, ethical, and affective demands of migrant narratives. There is a tension, inherent in working with the stories, the narratives of others’ lives, which often also implicate our own. In that tension, becoming conscious of our own implications (Rothberg, 2019), we both make and unmake our practices as “experts,” “scholars,” “specialists”—and we also build and dismantle our “authority.” Similarly, reflecting on these issues has two intersecting purposes. It aims to contribute to ongoing discussion about research method and research positioning in the field of Modern Languages, conjoining questions about the role of translation and (auto)ethnography in disciplinary research practices (Burdett et al., 2020; Wells et al., 2019) with observations on the way personal experience and ethical choices influence how we select, carry out, and narrate our investigations (Pugliese, 2019; Ricatti, 2022; Spadaro, 2020). At the same time, I intend to discuss the mobility of cultural products by following the complex, non-linear translational layering of production, circulation, and reception processes—what Felce (2021) calls “multitudinous translation”—and how that mobility, which is at the heart of a transnational approach to Italian culture (Bond, 2014; Burdett and Polezzi, 2020), can help us to overcome the silos structure and the hierarchies implicit in labels such as “Italian Studies,” “Italian American Studies,” and other such formulas. In this sense, it is also important to remember that