Des espaces péritextuels d’oeuvres philosophiques de Judith Butler traduites en français : un laboratoire privilégié pour s’interroger sur l’apport du sujet traduisant à l’élaboration de la pensée du traduire

Within the issue of the specificities of the peritexts of translated works in the field of the Human Sciences, where the circulation of new knowledge often gives rise to debates and polemics, my aim is to look at the nature of the translators’ interventions. Here, I choose to analyze the peritexts of the French translations of four works by the American philosopher Judith Butler, which concern the performativity of gender. Through Translators’ prefaces, notes and glossaries, I observe a multiplicity of actions, such as making explicit their reflections on their choice of equivalents or expressing their emotions, their empathy and their positions on Butlerian thinking, etc. I then focus on the untranslatable “perform”, a fundamental concept in Butler’s thought, which requires a complex translating activity. The translators explain and discuss their painstaking search for various equivalents. One of them proposes a neologism, which will be taken up later by other translators. In conclusion, I wonder if translating is “performing”.