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The upheavals of recent years have underscored the depth of global interconnectedness, with events like the COVID-19 pandemic, advancements in AI, and armed conflicts prompting swift and unpredictable economic and social changes worldwide. In particular, the discussion delves into the power dynamics within academia, the unequal positioning of researchers in the global knowledge market, and the fundamental right of translation within economic relationships. Drawing from a conference held in Bratislava, Slovakia, in September 2023, this article addresses issues of translation and interpreting-related power dynamics against the backdrop of contemporary political, economic, and cultural developments. Speakers from diverse backgrounds explore how academia can respond to prevailing power hierarchies and disparities in visibility, and whether such structures can be challenged or altered. The discussion extends to the subjectivity inherent in research, including sources of funding, national affiliations, and personal values. Ethical considerations surrounding researcher positionality and appropriating research topics are scrutinized, with a focus on inclusivity and participation. The article emphasizes the importance of considering diverse perspectives and ensuring representation in research teams, particularly when studying topics related to minority groups. Overall, the dialogue offers insights into navigating power dynamics within academia, advocating for ethical research practices, and promoting inclusivity in scholarly pursuits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article uses the review of a seminar, an exhibition, and a graduate conference, which took place at Tallinn University in the 2020-2021 academic year, as an occasion to reflect on the different ways in which illness has been represented in literature, the arts, and film across the history of Western culture. The specific focus of the article is on the theoretical contribution of the humanities to a more complex and adequate understanding of the phenomenon of illness. The study of illness narratives reveals different patterns and strategies of constructing the illness experience into a coherent and meaningful story, but also the resistance that the disruptive impact of illness on our everyday lives poses to narrativisation. The complex historical imagery which endows the biological fact of being sick with additional cultural and social meaning has also to be critically investigated in the humanities and social sciences. Metaphors about illness and the use of illness as a socio-political metaphor have often had a nefarious impact on sick people as well as entire social groups and communities. This is why the article also considers illness in its relations with politics and power and describes various attempts to empower sick people in their relations with medical institutions and their social environment. The article ends with a review of the "Illness: Narratives, Imagery, Politics" graduate conference (27-28 January 2021), which is a good illustration of the many literary and artistic works and of the plurality of methods that can be used in the study of the illness phenomenon from a humanities perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a multilayered analysis of the Estonian book series Loomingu Raamatukogu within the context of the Soviet Thaw. The series has been issued since 1957 and is principally devoted to translations of foreign literature. My argument takes the Thaw as a new field of uncertain possibilities and shows how a wide translation project became the catalyst for experimentation in the gray zone between the allowed and the forbidden. Investigating the entanglement of different levels of contextual analysis through the prism of Loomingu Raamatukogu lets us refine our understanding of the Thaw and of the complex possibilities and constraints that shaped the performative capacity of cultural agents in the Soviet 1960s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mental horizons of 19th-century Estonian national movement were largely modelled on German examples, while the building of Estonian national identity and the rise of the self-awareness of the Estonian people were made possible through the adaptation of national romantic ideology to local conditions. Up to the end of the 19th century Estonian literature largely consisted of adapted translations from German sources, many of which have not, however, been pinpointed as yet. The article was inspired by the discovery of two authors who served as literary models for Lydia Koidula. This discovery expanded our understanding of Koidula's sources and revealed that she drew not only on conservative authors of Volksbücher and a couple of other 19th-century authors, but also on two liberal German writers -- Theodor Mügge and Luise Mühlbach. Mügge's Eduard Montague (1845) was the source text for Koidula's story Juudit ehk Jamaika saare wiimsed Maroonlased/Judith, or the Last Maroons of the Island of Jamaica/ (1870), while Mühlbach's Kaiserin Josephine: ein Napoleonisches Lebensbild (1861) served as the source text for Koidula's Martiniiko ja Korsika /Martinique and Corsica/ (1869/1874). Koidula selected Mügge's and Mühlbach's works because of their resonance during the heyday of the Estonian national movement, which can also be termed as Koidula's political breakthrough. Both books deal with the French Revolution, which is recounted from different viewpoints -- the Old and the New Worlds, European power centres and their peripheries. A comparison of the German originals with Koidula's adaptations leads to the conclusion that there is a notable difference in the adaptation strategies of the two texts. Mügge's adaptation is rather close to the original text except for a few additions important for the Estonian national movement. In Mühlbach's adaptation, however, the focus is shifted from the author's intent in order to give a more thorough overview of the revolution, its causes and effects. Both strategies speak of Koidula's ambition to explain the formation of a people and its actions in revolutionary times. Such identification of literary models serves to create an integral picture of the cultural and ideological environment moulding Koidula's worldview. A comparison of the source and adapted target texts enables a better understanding of the means used by Koidula to construct her literary and ideological world. Her method was not one of servile imitation of foreign examples, but that of creative adaptation and localisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a comprehensive reading of Life & Times of Michael K, one of J. M. Coetzee’s most controversial novels, which has provoked strong feelings and an intense debate among critics since its publication in 1983. Scholarly works on the novel have tended to explore the ethical dilemma raised by the enigmatic life of the protagonist and his apparent unrelatedness with its “times”, focusing on the issues of absolute alterity and its (un)representability, while denying any political import to the novel. These interpretations draw on a conformist understanding of politics that transforms the social outsideness of Michael K into his political irrelevance. The argument developed in this article takes instead the reconceptualizations of (emancipatory) politics by Jacques Rancière and Giorgio Agamben as a basis for a thorough political reading of Michael’s outsideness. The notions of “dissensus” and “inoperativity” help to disclose, behind Michael’s apparently unpretentious life, a complex strategy aimed at maintaining his distance from power, while keeping power itself at a distance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]