The East-West divide is not obsolete. The hegemony is still intact, a Western hegemony of setting the direction. What has changed is the way in which we are dealing with it. Caught in the deadlock of transition, the East was translating itself into the idiom of the West by desperately striving to achieve the impossible—the authenticity of the original. But this is not what translation is about.
Boris Buden (b. 1958) is a writer, cultural critic, and translator. He holds a doctorate in Cultural Theory from Humboldt University, Berlin. In the 1990s he founded and was editor of the magazine and publishing house Arkzin in Zagreb. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Art and Design of Bauhaus University, Weimar. His essays and articles cover topics related to philosophy, politics, and the criticism of culture and art. He is responsible for the translation of some of the most important works of Sigmund Freud into Croatian. His publishing credits also include several co-edited publications and a number of books, including: Zone of Tran- sition: On the End of Post-communism (2009), Übersetzung: Das Versprechen eines Begriffs [Promises of a Concept] with Stefan Novotny (2008), Der Schacht von Babel: Ist Kultur übersetz- bar? [The Pit of Babel: Is Culture Translatable?] (2004). He lives and works in Berlin.
