The Politics of Affect in Literary Translation
Edited by Sofía Monzón (Utah State University) and Lucie Spezzatti (University of Geneva)
Scholarship on affect, emotion, embodiment, and feeling has significantly reshaped debates across the humanities and social sciences, while Translation Studies has increasingly turned toward the situated, embodied, relational, and socially embedded nature of translational practice (Koskinen 2020; Robinson 2023; Elsherif and Sobesto 2025; Monzón, Spezzatti, and Goemans 2026). Despite this growing interest, the specific role of affect in literary translation remains underexplored, particularly in relation to questions of creative labor, style, circulation, reception, institutional mediation, and cultural politics. The Politics of Affect in Literary Translation seeks to address this gap by asking how affect operates in, through, and around literary translation: as a force that shapes creative and interpretive processes; as a dimension of translational labor; as a relational dynamic among translators, authors, editors, publishers, readers, critics, institutions, and literary systems; as a mode through which translated literature circulates, is received, resisted, canonized, marginalized, or transformed. Rather than treating affect as an individual or purely psychological experience, the volume approaches affect as culturally, materially, historically, and politically situated. Its central claim is that literary translation is not only a textual, aesthetic, or intercultural practice, but also an affective process through which bodies, texts, institutions, and publics are moved, attached, regulated, and transformed.
Although the definition of “affect” varies across fields and theoretical traditions, this volume takes as one of its points of departure Koskinen’s understanding of affect as a “body-mind complex that directs a person towards a desired state of affairs through a process of change” (2020, 13). Affect, in this sense, is not abstract or disembodied, but materially and sensorially grounded, i.e., we are affected from within particular bodies, locations, histories, and relations. This understanding resonates with Ahmed’s account of emotions and affect as “a form of cultural politics and world making” (2004, 12) that are “sticky” as they move between subjects and objects, accumulating value, charge, and direction. Such a notion aligns with Massumi’s view of affect as “a dimension of life—including of writing, including of reading—which directly carries a political valence” (2015, vii).
At a moment when Translation Studies is increasingly attentive to questions of technology, labor, agency, circulation, and institutional mediation, this volume aims to examine literary translation as an embodied and affective practice. It is interested not only in how affect is represented in literary texts, but also in how affective forms, charges, attachments, intensities, moods, and atmospheres move between bodies, languages, texts, institutions, and publics. Affect may condition what is translated, how it is translated, who translates it, how literary translation is valued, and how translated works are received within specific cultural and historical contexts. The expression “politics of affect” therefore foregrounds how literary translation participates in broader affective domains by shaping attachment, exclusion, identification, resistance, intimacy, and forms of cultural circulation. To that end, we welcome theoretical, methodological, historical, ethnographic, practice-based, and case-study contributions that examine literary translation through the lens of affect and affect studies as both process and product. We are particularly interested in chapters that engage affect as a central analytical category for understanding literary and creative translation, including the translator’s embodied and emotional labor, the affective charge of style and voice, and the social or political consequences of translated literature across different literary systems. We also welcome contributions by literary translators who theorize their own practice, as well as work situated at the intersection of literary translation, creative writing, self-translation, multilingual writing, and research-creation.
The volume’s primary focus is on human literary translation, understood as an embodied, creative, relational, affective, and situated practice. We aim to explore the links between the individual and the social by attending to the emotional, embodied, material, and physiological dimensions of literary translation. Contributions addressing technological mediation are welcome if they remain centrally concerned with affect, embodiment, agency, creativity, or literary practice. However, the volume is not primarily concerned with machine translation, post-editing, or the impact of artificial intelligence on the literary translation industry. We invite contributions offering diverse perspectives, methodologies, language combinations, and cultural or historical contexts. In line with Vidal Claramonte’s recent article, we consider that translators “translate not only with our intellect but also with our body, emotions and senses” (2026, 5). Drawing primarily on affect theory (Deleuze and Guattari 1980; Flatley 2008; Ahmed 2004; Massumi 2002, 2015), we invite scholars to broaden the topic through feminist and queer translation studies, postcolonial and decolonial approaches, genetic translation studies, ecotranslation, sociology of translation, literary reception studies, archival research, translator studies, comparative literature, creative writing studies, and translation process research. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Theoretical approaches to affect, emotion, embodiment, and feeling in literary and creative translation;
- The politics of affect in translated literature and literary circulation;
- Relational, processual, sociological, network-based, and phenomenological approaches to affect in literary translation;
- Affective labor, emotional labor, and the embodied work of literary translators;
- Translators’ agency, subjectivity, voice, positionality, and stylistic choices—including form, rhythm, genre, mood, atmosphere, and emotional register—through the lens of affect theory;
- Affective responses to translation as process, product, relationship (e.g., translators’ archives, correspondence, drafts, paratexts, etc.);
- Affective dimensions of self-translation, multilingual writing, or creative translation (e.g., vulnerability, intimacy, desire, shame, grief, anger, joy, attachment, etc.);
- Affect, censorship, ideology, and the regulation of translated literature;
- Affective liminalities between literary translation, creative writing, and authorship;
- The role of editors, publishers, agents, reviewers, institutions, prizes, and markets in shaping the affective politics of literary translation.
Abstract submissions
Please send your abstract (500-750 words) and bio (150 words) to affectintranslation@gmail.com, by 15 August 2026.
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Prospective dates
15 August 2026 - Abstract submission deadline (500-750 words) and author’s bio (150 words)
15 September 2026 - Notification of acceptance
15 January 2027 - Chapter submission deadline (6000-8000 words, including notes and references)
Spring 2028 - Estimated publication
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Selected bibliography
Ahmed, Sara. 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 1980. Mille Plateaux. Paris: Éditions de Minuit.
Elsherif, Garda, and Joanna Sobesto. (eds.) 2025. Positionalities of Translation Studies. On the Situatedness of Translation Research. London: Bloomsbury.
Flatley, Jonathan. 2008. Affective Mapping. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Koskinen, Kaisa. 2020. Translation and Affect: Essays on Sticky Affects and Translational Labour. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Monzón, Sofía, Lucie Spezzatti, and Elisabeth Goemans. 2026. Affect in Translation and Interpreting. Leuven: Leuven University Press.
Massumi, Brian. 2002. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham: Duke University Press.
Massumi, Brian. 2015. Politics of Affect. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Robinson, Douglas. 2023. Priming Translation. Cognitive, Affective, and Social Factors. London: Routledge.
Vidal Claramonte, M. Carmen África. 2026. “Sensing Translation through the body: the case of Caroline Bergvall”. Feminist Translation Studies, 1-14.