Since you reference from time to time the general 'public' response to the three movies, you might have included a few more 'popular' reviews.

These concluding remarks are most relevant to Wall-E but less so to the other two movies. What about coming back to the question of alterenatives; ex. robots/AI 'becoming' more ethical and empathetic, more ecological and relational, etc.?

What social issues and injustices do you discuss in Her?

Hmm, according to posthumanism, humans were never unique

Need to be more specific - they raise the issues of desire and fear, asking about intimate relationships between humans-robots-AI but also the problem of intrusion (come back to Braidotti).

How does Theodore experience his body in this scene (running, dancing through the subway station)? How do Samantha's questions allow him to experience his body differently? In this way, you could speak of a co-embodiment, no? She gets him to imagine a very different kind of sexuality as well.

or that she does not have a locatable body - her 'materiality' is spread over many circuit boards.

Helpful to specify who the 'you' and 'we' are meant to refer to in your analysis of the three films. (Braidotti's golden rules - cartographic accuracy and ethical accountability)

References?

Make connection to 'Wall-E" that also seems to raise the question of robot love?

How do these sentences reassert the machine (artificial) vs human (real) dualism that posthumanism tries to undo?

Could you look more closely at the ways in which the robots are learning from romantic comedy? much like we humans learn what love is from watching movies? (I love the Netflix series "Love Death + Robots" that has a few examples of this kind of 'learning' love.) You might also discuss the 'reflection' in eyes as the 'window' of the soul in humanist discourse but not in this case of robot's recording screen eyes - or does the point about the flame (something early humans were purported to have been fascinated with) undo the human/machine distinction? (so not human with soul on the one side and robot with mirror/screen, inanimate reactions on the other)

To avoid general/vague projections, you could include a few more academic sources about these 'other' chances we could give technology.

start a new paragraph

provide hyperlinks to articles?

need a few more academic sources here to deepen your observations/reflections on animation/animated movies

maybe make a connection to "I, Robot" where robots are once again in the service of humans (yet they do not 'simply' play the role assigned to them).

I think you mean the posthuman world (it doesn't actually address the long history of humanism as a philosophy, a colonizing ideology, etc.)

What about touching on the question of race in this scene as well?

Here you could come back to Braidoitt's quotes about technology - intimacy and intrusion, fear and desire... etc.

How might these two sentences contradict each other? (in the one you say that the doctor is not a real person and in the next you state that the line is non-existent...)

Unclear.

Provide evidence (quote from the movie)

Moreover = what is more ;-)

Title of Isaac Asimov's short story that first set out the three laws of robotics.

include these?

?

lens

You discussed the fear... what about the desire?

Reference?

The Posthuman

A 'what' and not a 'why' question :-)

Lens

A really interesting and relevant way to connect to the discussion of the posthuman humanities!

Great point about VR gaming!

Maybe mention that some of these memories are recordings of the non-human world? (like in the image below) The video game is clearly asking what is worth remembering if/when humans disappear... very posthuman... but also in its desire to move beyond just human memories and experiences?

Very brief! What about including some initial gamers' reactions? Or how the game is being promoted on the internet? Or why you chose it? For example - https://kotaku.com/season-a-letter-to-the-future-ps5-steam-pc-game-review-1850069978 or https://www.theverge.com/23568494/season-a-letter-to-the-future-review-pc-playstation-ps5

Good!

Posthumanism as emphasizing the constantly changing processes of subjectivity (ontological relationality) - so B12 may be human in its memories but its 'body' is not (difficult to speak of 'traditional Humanism', no?) Does the cat 'save' just humanity, though? How do different human-animal-robot relations emerge?

include a few quotes from Braidotti's section on 'becoming-animal' (or include your definition of this concept)

zoe-centred?

Maybe you could include a note or two about why the game was create? Or how gamers rate the game?

I love the way you set up this page!

You might bring in the problem of capitalism here since posthumanism has an uneasy relationship with the post-anthropocentric power of global capitalism. How are video games bought and sold? How do they circulate on the internet? Who has access to them?

I have encountered this game before. Your personal reflections make the example that much more disturbing.

I had not heard of this game before... It illustrates in a terrifying way the violent othering that video games make possible.

We discussed in class the difference between 'subject' and 'subjectivity' (or the processes of becoming-subject that are always in motion) - you might want to underscore these processes by pointing out that gaming takes place in real time, over time, and so the processes involved change as the player becomes more and more immeshed in the temporality of the virtual world.

I'm not sure I understand - do you want to introduce the notion of becoming- here?

This page really nicely introduces the posthuman aspect of video games. Could you have paraphrased a little more often to cut down on the number of quotes? It would be great to hear how you agree AND disagree with these ideas.

Good!

Maybe organize this page in terms of the key concepts from posthumanism with which you are engaging? And include hyperlinks to your other pages so the user can jump back to previous questions?

?

I would start with the robot example rather than Dolly and taxidermy.

Maybe have both gendered readings on the same page to compare how animals are gendered differently from machines in your two case studies?

What about looking at TikTok or other forms of social media? Does Dolly the Sheep still come up on these?

Could the robot from the art exhibit "Can't Help Myself" also be considered a kind of monster?

Explain the switch from art to science as a way to continue examining the role of hybridity in the posthuman condition.

You could come back to your earlier point about categories - an inanimate object would be defined as not having blood... so the viewer asks who the blood 'belongs' to and how the machine is implicated - as a killer? cleaner? victim?

Come back to Lyons' quote about human values - how does the robot (and it's title) embody a set of these values?

Class discussion about posthumanism challenging the idea of an innate human nature?

The quote is about values rather than mimicking movements.

Good!

Explain your choice to look at social media in terms of posthumanist thought & art - a quote from Braidotti? something about art going beyond the human (postanthropocentric?) or not?

Explain first why you choose this piece with respect to thinking with/through posthumanism more generally?

include a quote from Braidotti on becoming-machine?

You do need to mention that you are looking at the ways in which art and science can push our engagements with, responses to and ways of imagining these hybrids (and maybe also introduce two key concepts here - becoming-machine and becoming-animal?)

Comment est-ce que tu aurais pu intégrer des pages du journal dans ton projet? Pour tester cette hypothèse sur la perspective objective vs subjective?

Need to reference or cite this article throughout your project.

Où se trouvent les références au non-dualisme dans ton projet? Tu pourrais fournir des hyperliens quand tu questionnes les dichotomies (mais duality et dichotomy ne sont pas la même chose)

Je cherchais des traces de cette démarche dans les témoignages mais je n'en ai pas trouvé.

Comment le relativisme peut-il mener à l'incohérence? (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/)

Est-ce que 'croire' tout court et 'avoir des croyances' sont la même chose?

Comment a-t-on parlé du sujet rationnel et de l'histoire (dominant) en classe?

Préciser en quoi cette communauté peut (ou ne peut pas) être virtuelle?

Pourquoi est-ce que cette partie ne se trouve pas sur la page Témoignage? Et quel est le lien entre 'choix' et la critique du sujet humain chez les posthumanistes?

Citation? Il n'est vraiment pas clair pour moi comment la notion de spiritualité se lie à l'inhumanisme dont parle Yusoff.

Intégrer la notion de zoe comme matière et énergie ici?

Expliquer pourquoi tu as choisi ces deux citations en particulier.

Dans quel sens plus profond est ce que c'est un exemple de 'devenir'? Il faut d'abord expliquer les traits essentiels de ce processus avant de parler d'un devenir-lune.

Comment peux-tu aider le lecteur à mieux comprendre 1) les points de base de cette rencontre entre le posthumanisme et la religion? et 2) le lien entre ces points de base et les trois témoignanges?

Tu racontes les faits/le cheminement de ces différentes rencontres avec des religions mais sans parler de tes croyances ni de tes valeurs - qu'as-tu gardé des valeurs (y compris féministes ou autre) de ta grand-mère et de ta mère?

Il y a plus de liens au posthumanisme sur cette page mais le tout est fragmenté - on se demande pourquoi tel ou tel aspect est choisi - comme l'immortalité artificielle ou la défamiliarisation. Il faut mieux expliciter ta démarche et en quoi elle répond aux questions de base sur le post-seculaire proposé par Braidotti dans son premier chapitre. Par exemple, Braidotti parle beaucoup du rôle des anciennes croyances de femme comme possibilité post-seculaire - comment est-ce que cet exemple se compare à celui de la vie de ta grand-mère?

"et dont elle a été témoin"

Je ne comprends pas cette phrase non plus - la mémoire peut très bien servir d'outil de défamiliarisation (ex. le sens de 'déjà-vu')

reçue

Faire un lien à nos discussions de la subjectivité comme encorporée?

Je ne comprends pas cette phrase - le posthumanisme met en question l'ontologie de l'être et pose les jalons d'une ontologie de l'étant ('becoming').

demandé

excommuniées

de mariage?

"tomber enceinte"

C'est beaucoup de résumé de votre discussion - comment intégrer la perspective posthumaniste et une analyse/interprétation de ce témoignage? Voir par exemple : "This is not only a source of social marginalization, but also a dubious privilege, in view of the entrenched sexism of monotheistic religions and their shared conviction of the necessity to exclude women from the ministry and the administration of sacred functions. " (Braidotti p34)

Pour 'faire vivre' le témoignage, ce serait bien d'intégrer des bouts d'enregistrement audio.

le passé composé marcherait mieux que le passé simple ici

sociales

"née"

Comment le posthumanisme cherche-t-il à mettre en question. la notion de la biographie comme histoire de l'individu? Qu'est-ce que l'individu d'après l'approche posthumaniste? Il faut faire le lien à nos discussions sur le soi, le sujet et la subjectivité comme trois modes ontologiques différents.

C'est très vague

Il faut faire le lien aux discussions en classe sur le 'post-séculaire' (chapitre 1), sur la non-linéarité (chapitre 4) et sur le problème que pose plus généralement le spirituel au vitalisme matérialiste (si tout est matière, qu'est-ce que l'esprit pour un posthumaniste?)

Could you have combined or reworked some of the instagram posts to reflect a more ethical/critical thinking about women-serval relationships? (this could have been your more creative component...)

This, too, needs to be better integrated into the project - maybe a final page with a list of possible 'suggestions' in terms of aesthetics, keeping servals as pets, instagram practices, etc.?

Move to welcome page - a question of 'situated knowledges'.

Are you suggesting that this could be a model for exploring serval subjectivity on Instagram? Posting from their perspective? Using blurry photography, etc.? If so, state your idea more clearly - it is a good one!?

explain this choice of image?

Interesting. How would this change the 'affective community' that Sharp (drawing on Spinoza) speaks about?

Which article? Is this supposed to be a link?

But as you noted on a previous page, for some, it seems to be more about a love for servals, creating a story/home for them, rather than a status symbol thing.

Unclear. How is this an example of 'becoming-animal' in the sense of affective communities (Spinoza/Sharp) or the sense of challenging human exceptionalism/post-anthropocentrism?

Need to define and explain the term 'bimbocore' - how does it trace a hard line between humans and animals? between men and women? etc.

Would this be the more natural habitat of servals? need some connection to becoming-animal or human-animal relations here as well.

It might be helpful to explain the different steps in this issue: 1) developing a strong critical framework for 'viewing' pets on instagram more generally; 2) articulating a set of practices for different kinds of pets (servals more like dogs in terms of size so need larger domestic habitats? or servals more like exotic animals so need a ban on keeping them as pets? etc.)

Be more specific - how is affect seen in the serval? and the woman?

Make a clearer connection to Braidotti's 'becoming-machine'?

A similar subservience to the (absent) male figure?

Strange to ask this question immediately below the picture of a man, non?

Link to Berger? Treating animals like family members, often like young children

In your annotations, you could mention some of the animal poses, the challenge to 'posing' and the way we 'gaze' or do not 'gaze' (objectify) the animals in the posts

Come back to Berger's theoretical framework of 'seeing' (ie. objectifying) and the gaze?

Interesting question - follow-up? How does the hashtag challenge or facilitate 'becoming-animal'? (or reducing once again the animal to household decor)

You could connect this entire discussion to the concept of 'becoming-machine' and Braidotti's reflections on capitalist commodification of all of life.

How could you make a stronger claim based on Berger's critique? How do servals simply become another form of decor (like in the zoo setting)? How do the instagram posts contribute to making these animals a kind of 'household' decor? etc.

And also the ability to see animals as wholly and completely other (something we can never fully understand) Why the owl image?

Careful with double negations - "neither exist in a state of utopia" - and with your use of the plural pronoun "we" - It's true that the Internet feels ubiquitous and available to all... but it's not.

Maybe come back to this first image and ask who is looking where? and seeing what? how are we asked to gaze at the woman and the serval in the first image?

You explain your project objectives and key questions on this page through a series of claims around a 'we', the Internet, post-Soviet aesthetics, but this all feels a little disjointed. You could have instead started with an analysis of your image - how do you see animal-human distance and proximity in this image? What mirroring effects are created? how does the serval challenge the selfie standard (not looking at the camera), etc? How are the two 'creatures' in the image positioned? who is closer to the camera? etc. You could also have defined 'becoming' with respect to this instagram post - in what ways does the image illustrate a 'becoming-animal'? a becoming-machine? Annotating the image could have been an interesting way to ask these questions.

Questions you are asking the user or yourself?

Could you propose a more interesting title?

I appreciate your enthusiasm and the fact that you are ending on a positive note but I think you could actually add: "at what cost? and to whom?" to the end of this sentence.

These points could be linked to your discussion of environment and art, and the effect of objects on the mind on your weebly page.

Interestingly, Hayles asserts in her article that machines can read. From your description of the preliminary steps to 'feeding findings in the machine,' I get the sense that you would disagree. In fact, your entire argument about translation as a loss of meaning (and your use of Google Translate) would support such a critique of Hayles' thinking. It would have been interesting to contrast your understanding of language and reading to that of Hayles.

I would call this visualization an example of machine reading, actually, and not hyper-reading.

You need a sentence here about machine reading since this is what Voyant Tools does.

I am a little confused by your use of the term analogue here. At first, I thought you were referring to recording audio on tape or something (so, sound waves). Use the word print to make it clear which medium you are referring to.

You could come back to your scalar visualization to explain the two main structures of your project (network vs. concentric circles).

It would also be really interesting to see whether the uncanny emerges in the same way in texts by 19th century women writers like Mary Shelley or Jane Austen... or if it does at all - do women writers encounter/recreate this claustrophobia in the same way? What objects are most common in the bourgeois interior of their texts? I noticed that Prewitt Brown includes Austen and Woolf in her book. It would be interesting to see if she takes up some of these questions especially in light of feminist scholars Gilbert and Gubar's work, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (1979)

Well actually, one is in 'English translated from German.'

Too bad the weebly page doesn't have an annotation tool! I'll put my comments here instead.

• The weebly page followed more a traditional essay format, as we had discussed it would. The photos were an excellent addition to the ideas. At times, I felt like they actually 'spoke' for themselves and didn't necessarily need the textual explanations. The lighting in the photos created the sense of a supernatural presence hovering just beyond the frame!
• To better integrate the weebly page into the project, more connections needed to be made with the scalar parts in terms of content. As it is, the weebly page feels like a stand-alone project (you only mention Wilde, Balzac, and Hofmannsthal at the end). The general description of the 19th century and the bourgeois interior could have been linked to the questions you were asking elsewhere in the project; ex. when you were explaining the connection between environment and art in the 19th century, I immediately thought of the fact that your project resides in a virtual space. You could have referenced this aspect of your project and explored the effect on the three literary texts as 'art'. Also, you spoke of objects possessing the mind during the rise of the bourgeoisie and this, too, made me think of how the internet has to some extent this same power today. In what ways does the obsession with the object reverberate in your own project?

The weebly pages are a great surprise! (Don't forgot to include copyright information for your images, and not just an URL)

• This page was a lot of fun to explore! I'm not sure if you noticed but when a window appears, say the clip from 'Bel Ami', you can still see the original photo behind the new window. Is this one of the options in Scalar, to create a semi-transparent layer on top of the base layer? It certainly fits with the theme of the uncanny!
• I also liked the use of quotes to create a layering of text on top of/next to the images which echoes a point you made elsewhere in the project about the reader creating visual images when reading these three texts.
• As an aside - I would have liked to see the 'Translating Destiny' reference in your bibliography since it seems like it influenced your analysis of Wilde and Hofmannsthal.
• Overall, this part of your project really successfully recreates the sense of the cultural apparatus and the claustrophobia that you associate with all three texts - well done!

Given the merchant's son is not overwhelmed by so many objects, does the text still create a sense of the uncanny? Or is this the point you are making (in contrast to the two other texts)?

This point about the overwhelming sense created by so many words and lines in the visualization is absolutely true. But this doesn't really show us something about the prevalence of object words in the novel (since this is a list of all words, right?) You would need to do some comparison of object words related to the bourgeois interior to other words in the novel to be able to say something conclusive (at least quantitatively) about the 'overwhelming' descriptions.

But this is a visualization of all the words in the novel and not just the objects of the bourgeois interior, right? Could you have identified some of the most frequent nouns that point to the bourgeois interior? From what I can see, it seems like human characters are more important than objects; ex. dorian, henry, man, life, said, etc.

Again, the variety of visualizations is fantastic, but I'm missing the main argument/idea behind them. How do these graphs show the uncanny exactly? Are these parts of the text that you identified through close reading as creating a sense of the uncanny? and then you uploaded these parts into Voyant to see what kinds of words appeared at these points/moments?

I'm intrigued by the sizes of the words in this cloud. Did you change the settings to make the less important words really small? Or is this a visualization of word occurrences?

I need a little more help getting to this conclusion. Does the uncanny emerge from the relations between words that are identified in the visualization (which is also fascinating!)? ie. peau, hommes, jeune, monde, mort, vie, voir (and then a line shooting out to 'mouvement')

Wow! How did you find the link to another scalar project?

This is a very cool visualization but I actually don't really know what I'm looking at. I can see that the use of the word Dorian peaks and then falls in the second half of the novel but I'm not sure how this connects to the point you are making about the uncanny. Is this the line in turquoise?

• I found the link to Voyant tools in the annotation and found out that the turquoise line is 'life'. So what is it about the objects that I'm supposed to see?

Your use of different styles of visualization is really effective on this page, especially in light of the parameters you used for each of your analysis (entering more or less text).

Because there are so few words and links in the visualization, the reader actually has less room for interpretation. It might be interesting to discuss how the interpretive steps that you did before using the text analysis tool end up limiting what the tool can do (that a reader couldn't do - ie. count the number of words that appear most often around the name 'Dorian Gray' for example.

Ouf! this is a lot of work!

Again, you might offer an interpretation of the ways in which words contrast each other in this visualization - ex. sourire/mort follow each other in the list on the right (but I actually don't see much else). There are other words that fit together in terms of champ lexical though, like mains, tête, bouche, yeux, coeur that could all be part of 'corps' as a champ lexical.

Could you explain a little why you are using visualizations with respect to 'champ lexical'? I'm a little confused. I think topic modelling might actually be more like 'champ lexical' because it identifies all the words in a text that are part of a same theme/topic. But maybe I didn't follow the link between the introduction to this part of the project and your analysis of character. It's true that the reader forms an image of the character based on the words around their name but this isn't a champ lexical... or at least, not how I understand it.

• This doesn't mean the visualizations aren't interesting - they are! I think you could actually say a lot about the differences - the first visualization has quite a few verbs whereas the second one seems to have more nouns. You might explain how a portrait is made by movements (the painter's brushstrokes or actions) and objects/pieces (eyes, face). Or maybe the increased amount of text for the second visualization simply creates more variety in the words that appear. But I think you could offer a few possible interpretations of the two visualizations, their differences in terms of the kinds of words that appear.

Pourriez-vous donner votre définition du champ lexical? Je ne suis pas sûre que je pense à la même chose que vous !

Une observation très intéressante. Vous voulez dire que le texte crée de plus en plus de connexions sémantiques?

Mais les champs lexicaux changent au cours du temps, n'est-ce pas? S'il s'agit des mots qui sont associés à d'autres mots, ces associations peuvent changer; ex. pendant longtemps la montagne était considérée comme laide, hideuse, le contraire d'un paysage beau (donc on n'aurait pas trouvé le mot 'montagne' dans le champ lexical 'paysage'); c'est grâce à Rousseau que la montagne est devenue un exemple de la 'belle nature'.

What strikes me in this initial description is the emphasis on a much more natural/garden setting and the way it contrasts with the urban interiors that you will discuss in the next part of the project. I'm wondering if it would have made sense to analyse how the words about nature get translated compared to words about objects (like 'saccoche').

Or Charles Dickens The Tale of Two Cities - "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."

Important point!!

foreshadowing?

See my previous point about why these (overly) appreciative statements are problematic.

Well not exactly unfathomable... there are three references to Greek myth and then two references to the Church.

You need to support this claim - what qualifies as 'poetry or poetic rhythmic' for you? The use of alliteration? The sentence length? etc. etc.

But Balzac's passage has a ton of cultural references as well - Poussin, Michel-Ange, Claude Lorrain, Gérard Dow, Sterne, Rembrandt, Murillo, Velasquez, lord Byron, Raphaël, Corrège !

Je n'avais pas compris que le texte à droite vient de Google Translate et je me demandais pourquoi c'était tellement 'plat' comme traduction. Est-ce que vous auriez pu inclure une explication du processus avant ou après l'image? ex. pourquoi vous avez choisi de jouer avec cet outil, ce qu'il vous a permis de constater, etc.

Attention aux appréciations sommaires (un peu trop subjectives!) Vous pouvez dire par contre que les descriptions de Balzac recréent avec une grande authenticité les petits détails du lieu en question.

Comme vous avez lu Hofmannsthal en anglais et non pas en allemand, il ne faudrait pas l'inclure dans votre comparaison ici.

mais l'oeuvre de Hofmannsthal est une nouvelle et non pas un roman, n'est-ce pas?

Vous pourriez vous servir de la théorie de la littérature fantastique de Todorov ici.

Référence bibliographique?

Ce n'est pas étonnant dans un roman réaliste où la description prend une valeur informative et / ou symbolique très importante.

Also the difference between literal translation by a machine and contextual translation by a professional. But you might ask here what it would take for a machine to be able to translate as well as human...

Or rather, your interpretation is limited to the effects of the English translation. Whether something has been lost is impossible to say since you have not read the original German.

You need to avoid these kinds of statements since you have not read the original. You can only really speak to the impact of the English translation...

Why is it impactful? What are the traits of impactfullness? What strikes me about the Balzaz passage and this passage are the exactly opposing attitudes of the characters towards the objects - in Balzac, the gaze is one of disgust, distaste, dislike; whereas in H, the character is clearly delighted with this variety of objects. Another thing that strikes me in this passage is the use of repetition - "discovered... discovered... colours... colours... colours..." I wonder if this is similar in the German original.

A reminder to not forget the narrator (who is not the author).

But how can you know if this 'impactful description' appears in the same way in the original? If you are going to make an argument about the original text, I think you need to have read it, especially in light of the more general argument you are making in your project that translation necessarily incurs losses.

This point about not reading the original in German should appear on the introduction page to 'translation' somewhere (with additional justification and explanation).

Do you mean the narrators' commentary?

For future developments of the project - I'm thinking it would be useful to read a few key texts in literary translation studies.

I'm not quite sure what you are referring to here when you speak of the author's 'own life and environment'. Metatextual references? Autobiographical references? Why would description be more amenable to these references than say dialogue?

Again, you have two competing explanations of how literature works here - 1) the reader imagines the storyworld 'for himself' ; vs. 2) the reader 'finds' the storyworld in the text.

Some would argue the opposite; ie. that plot is at the heart of any text!

It feels like you were moving a little too quickly through your arguments on this page. Including some actual definitions from the Grand Robert and the OED would have helped support your claims (and illustrated the evolution of meaning over time). I would have liked a few quotes from the book as well where the word 'picture' alongside or in opposition to 'portrait' is being used.

You need to support your claims with bibliographical references.

Could you include the copyright information for the image in the description?

Could you annotate the image to explain why you included it?

What is the original word used in German?

I know this question came up a few times in our discussion of your project, but I'm still unsure about the fact that you are not considering the original word/text in German - were there any students in the fin-de-siècle class you took with Professor Peters who did speak German?

Je pense qu'il faudrait regarder le OED (Oxford English Dictionary) pour mieux comprendre ce que le mot 'magic' voulait dire au 19e siècle (probablement pas Aladin!) et comment le sens a changé au cours des années.

J'ai lu ce texte pour la première fois il y a vingt ans et ma façon de comprendre 'peau' était à peu près pareille à la vôtre. Mais ma façon de lire a changé au cours des années et je fais beaucoup plus attention maintenant aux références à la 'question animale' (Derrida) dans les textes littéraires. Pour moi, il faudrait lire ce roman de Balzac dans le contexte du rapport humain-animal au 19e siècle. Autrement dit, on pourrait enrichir notre interprétation du texte en le situant dans d'autres contextes et en changeant d'angle d'interprétation. Tout ça pour dire que le 'cultural apparatus' ne reste pas le même au cours des années et que c'est exactement pour cela qu'un texte s'avère 'great' - il donne naissance à de nouvelles interprétations presque 200 ans plus tard.

Cette description détaillée du contexte socio-historique soulève tout de suite une question importante pour moi - qu'en est-il du lecteur francophone contemporain qui n'a pas ce même contexte? est-il voué à ne pas comprendre le texte complètement? ou peut-il construire un sens légèrement différent mais tout aussi riche sur le plan linguistique et culturel selon les liens qu'il est capable de faire entre cette expression et d'autres expressions en français?

Il 'perd tout sens' ou il acquiert un tout autre sens?

But for Coetzee, there is no 'original' and so no loss of meaning; instead, there is 'different imagery' as you point out.

I'm curious as to how you are constructing a notion of a text's greatness in this project. Here you seem to be pointing to intertextuality as a measure of greatness whereas earlier you are evoking rich imagery. This idea of great literature very much aligns with Harold Bloom's way of thinking (see for example The Western Canon) but it has also been highly critiqued by feminist and post-colonial scholars. Given that you have chosen three, white male authors, you may want to acknowledge this position at some point in the project - not to apologize for it but instead to recognize the link between a literary discourse about 'great' works and the creation of the Western Canon.

And imagery necessarily implies a reader.

You have a couple different arguments going on about literature here: on the one hand, that great works have an essence that transcends time; on the other, that texts provoke emotions in readers (and these would necessarily change depending on the reader).

Hmm, Walkowitz links 'translatability' to form so that it is not the language that is translatable in and of itself but the form taken by the literary text. I think you are actually making a similar argument about specific words and their embeddedness.

There is a gap of almost sixty years now? We go from Balzac's realism to Wilde's décadence over this time period.

Don't forget that the translator is also trying to 'be true' to her own socio-historical context, which is why 'revised' or 'new' translations come out.

Exactly. And this 'cultural apparatus' changes over time. So even if the words on the page are the same, the cultural apparatus - that I understand as both what the reader brings to the text and what is found 'in' the text - changes over time.