Avant-garde translation theory basically argues for the foregrounding of translation. It's a kind of Russian formalist idea of the "laying bare of the device." Translation should not be "invisible" or "transparent." It should remind you constantly that it is translation, mainly by including heterogeneous materials taken from both languages and cultures. This avant-garde ideal is then combined with the ethical imperative of recognizing the validity of the cultural *other.* That is, foregrounded, foreignizing translation, by laying bare its own devices, has the opposite effect of domesticating, invisible translation that simply assimilates the cultural other into domestic expectations.

Where is that connection between Russian formalist theory and contemporary multiculturalism? That's what I want to figure out. Is it through Derrida's influence on postcolonial theory? Through Benjamin and the Franfort school? I feel there is missing piece somewhere I'm not getting.