José Emilio Pacheco and reciprocity between literary cultures: Gift theory as translation studies methodology

José Emilio Pacheco affirms that poetry is made by the collective, anonymous effort of writers in every language, and his translation practice returns debts he feels he owes other writers, including his own translators. I use the theory of the gift developed by Marcel Mauss as a methodology to interrogate the translation networks Pacheco participated in and to highlight forms of translation that are reciprocal rather than unidirectional.