People and words: spaces of circulation and political encounters in the experience of “Edizioni Oriente” (1963-1979)

The 16 years of experience of the Italian publishing house Edizioni Oriente and its journal Vento dell’Est have been an attempt to reshape Italian communist strategy through timely translations of Chinese ideological documents. The texts produced and the activities of translators attempted to forge a new society aiming at the realization of Chinese communist practices in twentieth-century Italy. The transformation of society that these actors attempted through their statements and their translations can only be proved by following their actions and outcomes in the attempt to build knowledge of China – and to spread Western political knowledge in China – while giving new lifeblood to their political ideas, which were reshaped and reconfigured. The present analysis will pay attention not only to the role of politicians and translators in transmitting existing knowledge to create a new one in a different space but also to the reactions of target readers and society as a whole (Callon et al. ed., 1986). The means used as a link between actors and society are texts, transmitting a message that makes them agents in their turn (Latour, Hermant, 1996). The importance of texts is defined in a ‘space of circulation’ (Raj, 2017) in which ideas have an impact on society in all of its aspects.