P-Prompt: Do first times exist?
In October 2023, Femke and Eva organised an event at Göteborg Literature House that they decided to call “First Times do not exist” referencing a quote from Mexican author Cristina Rivera Garza's book on disappropriation. We invited Jen Hayashida and Nkule Mabaso to speak about their practices of translation and citation. They both responded to the title in very different ways, and we are interested in the friction between these two approaches.
Jen talked about translation as a practice of reuse, reflecting on the position of the translator in relation to the text. She made clear that for her a “transhistorical awareness” is needed for the author/translator not to behave in a settler way, as if they were the first on the scene.
Nkule enters the scene from a different position, stating that first times might not exist, but that there is always a first time for you. She therefore focuses her view on how she enters the scene through her own horizon of experience. This focus allows her to cite and reuse with integrity.
Could we imagine a practice in which both perspectives coexist?
Jen Hayashida (20:07)
Because to me, it's a temporal question, which is at the heart of what you titled this event ["First Times Do Not Exist"]. I think one of the hazards, or I don't want to be that absolute, but it is this thinking that you're the first person entering the story. I mean, this question is, to me, incredibly present now: do you call something a defence or do you call it an attack? So that, to me, is a way of thinking about the translator’s sort of position in relation to the text. If the translator imagines that they are the first person there, in a sort of settler way, then that to me is something... The same is true of the author. Obviously, if the author has an errand in writing, where they want to claim that they are the first person there, then that to me is something that is inherently suspicious. And as a translator, I think – this is not really answering your question – to be very mindful of the fact that you're never the first person there, and to treat the language and the claims of the text with that kind of trans-historical awareness.
Nkule Mabaso (14:13)
Yeah, so I'll pass the publication around. I don't know if it helps anything to see it because the issue is not there. The issue is somewhere else. The issue is a third site, [it lies] somewhere else, in the connecting space, [in the malformed] synapses that draw these things together. And the way I tried to approach it – since I work quite collaboratively all the time–and the title of today is “there is no first time” – I guess, yes, there is no first time, but there is a first time for you. When you encounter something, and that thing catalyses something, how do we then cite and make space for that moment of encounter? How do we make an acknowledgment of: “This thing that happened, catalysed my thinking in this way”. What would be an adequate way to signal that?
