Translation in the context of culture:The destiny of Michel Foucault's The order of things

Abstract

The article deals primarily with the complex situation of Michel Foucault's Les mots et les choses (1966) being introduced into Russian/Soviet culture (1977). The translation and publication could be treated as a “Soviet miracle”. During the “era of stagnation”, publication without any cuts by the censorship of a book that included striking critical passages on Marxism was an unprecedented event. This happened more than 40 years ago. In the present period, due to a renewed interest in the period of the 1960s–1970s both in France and in Russia, historians, sociologists and philosophers ask themselves how could the book appear in the Soviet ideological and cultural context, who decided to publish it, what was its reception by readers, etc. The author of this article, who was fortunate to be able to introduce Michel Foucault to Soviet/Russian readers and who translated the book (together with V. P. Vizgin), discusses the circumstances of its translation and of how it was perceived in Russia during the Soviet and post-Soviet period. The article lays out the general situation during the Soviet period of a total absence of translations of contemporary Western philosophical literature; points out the features of content and structure of Foucault's book that attracted some Russian/Soviet scholars'; outlines the necessity of developing Russian conceptual languages, especially in the process of translating texts of contemporary Western philosophy and human sciences; and, finally, enumerates some changes that the initial translation of the text underwent in the process of preparing a new critical edition.