Application of literary logic to meta-literary discourse in Godayol

Thinking about the Godayol piece, it occurred to me that a strange sort of irony exists between the piece’s implicit endorsement of the “new non-sexual and non-restrictive images for future theoretical dialogues within the discipline” and its recapitulation (for purposes of critique and historical contextualization) of the entrenched "sexual" metaphors. Godayol writes, “It is our duty and our responsibility to carry out archaeological tasks to provide ourselves with textual and metaphorical mothers from the past and the present, from here and from there, and thus overcome the long absence of feminine models in the socially visible and operative translation discourses.” I think that this directive introduces many complex questions, among them, who is the us of the our? To whom is this duty and responsibility owed? Why are both/either historical and contemporary models required? Why are both/either textual and metaphorical models required? 

Personally, I feel unconvinced of the importance of metaphorical models for translation in general, including for some of the reasons that this article points out—the value judgements and hierarchies inherent in the metaphorical analog are then inherited into the discourse itself, whether or not they are independently relevant to that discourse. Metaphor is a literary device, but in this case the conversation (like many other theoretical conversations about translation) is not so much literary as meta-literary; there is a way in which literary logic, like this use of figurative language, should be excluded from meta-literary conversations, because to use it in this way would be to take it out of its applicable domain. In this way I think the article is right to be critical of historical metaphors for translation, but wrongheaded to endorse the pursuit of new metaphors, when it is not clear that metaphors like this are required in order to talk about translation in the first place. 

The Medusa/Athena idea, for instance, is evocative and interesting, but brings in a whole new landscape of unforeseen consequences. Moreover, I have a hard time understanding how it is a metaphor for translation at all—what is being thought of as source text, what as target text, who is the translator, what exactly is what within the metaphor? It is less that I disagree with the metaphor, and more that I don’t understand the way in which it seeks to attach itself to the topic of translation. My best understanding of it is as an attempt to introduce the translator as a living personality, active in a hierarchical (and also living) world, but the use of the metaphor to communicate this feels imprecise and convoluted.   

-Elijah