Editorial

"Nunca volvemos al pasado, y por eso todo regreso es un comienzo."
("We never go back to the past, which is why every return is a beginning.")
Octavio Paz

Transeuropéennes, founded in 1993, was relaunched in the autumn of 2009 after a period of reflection during which work continued unabated. It now takes the form of an online multimedia journal that has accepted the challenge of publishing in a range of languages: not just French and English, as before, but also Arabic and Turkish. In this way it aims to link complex worlds to one another, sketching out movements of divergence, conflictual dynamics, points of encounter. The journal is placing itself in translation, with a new structure which, in a sense, is still more radical than before.

Transeuropéennes, thus transformed, has to examine the conditions of possibility of an international journal, in the aftermath of the analogous projects that preceded it. It is carving out its own path, which is bound up with its history, and with the European and global contexts of the past two decades. At the present time, on the terrain of critical thinking, how is relationship, the in-common, to be thought about and constructed? Practical questions involving the circulation of texts, ideas and works are not everything – far from it. And this was the reason for the inception of the "Translating in the Mediterranean" project in 2008, as a way of connecting up theory and action.

The "in-common" that Transeuropéennes aspires to cannot be taken for granted. Within a logic of continuity with previous initiatives and work, it is part of a regional perspective, in Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy's "geophilosophical" sense, as passages, bridges, crossings. And as regards the ever more normative, ever more exclusionary borderlines that we must continually interrogate, Transeuropéennes draws on Glissant and Chamoiseau's "politics of relationship", starting with disparities of language, forms of imagination, representations and histories (both individual and collective), and their interactions.

This task runs counter to the general trend, and is more difficult than it would have been some years ago, despite the fact that the conditions for the production of an online review are now technically simpler, thanks to the Internet. In Marrakesh, in 2002, Transeuropéennes and its Moroccan partners organised the first biennial of journals of critical thought from both sides of the Mediterranean, the theme of which was "Resistances and utopias". If the same proposal were to be formulated today, we would no doubt retain the first term, "resistances", as being neither suspensive nor silent. The logics of dissociation are now even stronger than might have been expected from the sombre situation of 2002-2003. How is construction to take place when logics of decoupling and disappropriation are being pushed ever further? What is to be translated, what attempted? And with whom? Starting with what resonances?

The fact that Transeuropéennes is making its reappearance at this juncture is no coincidence. It has been patiently encouraged by friends and sympathisers, with support from its partners. And there is also the general observation that since it suspended publication in 2004, the resulting void has not been filled. In order for it to play its full role as an International Journal of Critical Thought, the editorial board, faithful to the presiding ethos, has brought in new members from different horizons.

This is really a new project. And the decision to abandon the printed version was anything but anodyne. Free, unlimited access to texts implied a new economic approach, based on donations. Work-based themes (our "work in progress") will also, to some extent, be new and orientated towards long-term reflection. Unconstrained by questions of pagination, the review will build up, stratum by stratum, a body of critical thinking that is open and receptive.

The problematics involved in this process are currently being discussed, with authors from different backgrounds. And for its relaunch, Transeuropéennes has decided to join an ongoing movement of thinking about translation. This actually began with issue No. 22 of its print edition, "Translating, Between Cultures", which came out in 2002, and proved highly influential. The following texts have a double articulation: firstly, that of opening up translation as reversion and passage, capable of looking between the dominant representations, normative productions and logics of partition; secondly, that of working on translation in the melting pot of differences between languages, always questioning the untranslatabilities and constructions of language itself. At the philosophical and political focus of the debate, expressing the universal does not relate to universality as such, but to translation.

Another of Transeuropéennes' core concerns is that of "frontiers", which has been treated in terms of markers, passage, comings and goings, compartmentalisations and breaches, asylum and retention. The photographic approach we propose is that of a sentinel.

Over long months of work with the painstaking, inventive designers and developers of the site, www.transeuropeennes.eu, an elaborate construct came into being. The site is still evolving, but already operational. It is for sharing.

Translated from French by John Doherty