From 1960 onwards, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the GDR saw an intensive engagement with authors such as Bataille, Barthes, Foucault and Derrida, concentrated particularly on the periphery of institutionalized academia and in the sphere of the unofficial (samizdat, reading circles, illegal living room seminars). When it comes to describing this situation, however, the narratives of transfer and circulation that intellectual history has relied on since the 1980s (e.g. Edward Said’s traveling theories) are suitable only to a very limited extent. Hence, the project suggests rethinking the transnational history of theory in terms of translation rather than of mobility. This is based, among others, on the hypothesis that theory is also, and perhaps even first and foremost, a linguistic practice, which also raises the overarching question of the extent to which such a perspective can reveal fundamental aspects of the emergence, transmission and diffusion of theoretical knowledge in general.

Anna Förster holds an MA in Slavic literatures and translation studies from the University of Leipzig and a PhD in comparative literature from the LMU Munich (2018). Currently, she is teaching at the department for comparative literature at the University of Erfurt. Her research focuses on Polish, Czech, and Slovak literatures and cultures as well as on Central and Eastern European literary theory and its history. Additionally, she publishes on question of translation and translates Czech and Anglophone literature.