The first issue of Barricade: A Journal of Antifascism and Translation (Cicada Press) will see the light this May. Barricade is a platform for international antifascist and antiauthoritarian literature. It is a direct response against the increasingly vocal forces of the populist, nationalistic and chauvinist reaction, emboldened in the US by the election of Donald Trump. Barricade has an eye to the present, while seeking to establish manifold connections between antifascists across time and linguistic divides. It is dedicated both to the practice and theory of translation in the name of solidarity and the better world.
The release party will take place on Saturday, May 12, 7pm @ Verso, 20 Jay Street.
The initiative and financial support for Barricade come from New York University’s Department of Comparative Literature.
The editorial board of Barricade is currently seeking to expand its membership. Translators, writers, and artists with or without academic affiliation are invited to join.
The inaugural edition features works translated into English for the first time by Walter Benjamin, Hisham Bustani, Georges Castera, Fruela Fernández, Werner Kofler, Jiři Kratochvil, and Yuriko Miyamoto, as well as an interview with Diane Rubenstein.
Praise for Barricade:
"Born of the onrush of le grand mal (seizure) in the wake of the U.S. elections of 2016, Barricade is a journal of political resistance to authoritarianism in its myriad contemporary guises, built up, as the editors proclaim, from “dissassembled hopelessness and reconstituted rage.” A journal that mobilizes translation as political praxis – entangling far-flung worlds of literature, aesthetics and protest - Barricade sounds off against the downer thrum, producing a cacophony of liberating voice offs."
-- Emily Apter
"Barricade makes an essential contribution toward transcending national and linguistic barriers in the pursuit of a true anti-fascist and anti-authoritarian internationalism."
-- Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-fascist Handbook and Translating Anarchy