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In the context of a seemingly homogeneous undergraduate population, courses in World Literature and World Humanities confront the twin hazards of reducing difference either to the essential exotic or to a flawed version of the universal. This article explores how a more sensitive, generous, and nuanced encounter with difference can be encouraged through the notion that reading, listening, and translating are "performances" during which one may experience that one "no longer has a 'me' but has a 'not not me'" (Schechner). Using multiple translations complicates the initial assumption held by many readers that there must be one correct translation of a given text, that every text, in effect, has one fixed identity. Comparing translations facilitates broader discussion of the nature of interpretation, the relationship between language and meaning, as well as issues of identity, originality, and authority. After addressing some examples of this process, the essay considers the shape-shifting qualities of
Shona mbira dzaVadzimu music, which exemplifies parallels between the multiplicitous nature of oral traditions and that inherent in literature in translation. The essay suggests that these qualities are also linked to the profound historicity of this indigenous art, which disqualifies the common stereotype of oral and non-Western cultures as ahistorical. Similarly, the use of multiple translations for the study of poetry in translation is designed to expand awareness of literature as itself a fluid history of "performances," including the readings of students themselves.
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