Abstract
AbstractThis paper brings the notion of translation into dialogue with the growing literature on international hierarchies and the historical origins of the modern international order. Leveraging on the writings of Karl Marx, I draw parallels between the exchange of commodities and the translation of linguistic signs in order to unmask the inequalities and asymmetries that pervade the practice of translation. I then deploy these theoretical insights to illuminate the global constitution of the modern international order. In this Marx-inspired reading, the modern international order is cast as the ‘universal equivalent’ that has crystallized out of the asymmetries and contradictions that pervaded the global political economy of conceptual exchange in the long 19thcentury. As universal equivalent, the modern international order effectively functions as the socially recognized ‘metalanguage’ that undergirds the miracle of global translatability and makes international/interlingual relations possible on a global scale. The paper concludes by considering the implications of the analysis for the future of international/interlingual hierarchies and world order.
Highlights
It is often said that something – meaning, significance – is lost in translation
A central claim of this paper is that the lens of translation offers fruitful avenues into the study of social, cultural, and linguistic hierarchies in international relations: what is found in translation is, in the first place, asymmetry and inequality
If the modern international order is understood as a concrete social formation rather than an abstract theoretical category, as a product of history rather than a transcendental given, what is found in translation is nothing less than the global constitution of the modern international order – the modern international order is found(ed) in translation
Summary
The study of concepts has been dominated by two approaches that emerged concurrently yet independently. The intended meaning of a word or text is always haunted by alternative meanings that cannot be reduced to or derived from the intentions of the author Koselleck characterizes this haunting as ‘the contemporaneity of the noncontemporaneous’ (die Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen).. A concept, is like a miniature theory of the social world: ‘It bundles together the richness of historical experience and the sum of theoretical and practical lessons drawn from it’, as Koselleck puts it.. A concept, is like a miniature theory of the social world: ‘It bundles together the richness of historical experience and the sum of theoretical and practical lessons drawn from it’, as Koselleck puts it.32 In this way, a concept encapsulates both a. By structuring the experiences and expectations, concepts function as the constitutive elements of social imaginaries: ‘concepts create, through their “topography”, the reality to which we relate and attribute significance’.35 Charles Taylor defines a social imaginary as ‘the ways in which people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations’.36 In anthropological terms, a social imaginary may be understood as a ‘cognitive schema’ or ‘cultural model’ that is embodied in institutions, practices, and material objects. the material world is a key factor in determining the experiences and expectations of actors.38 ‘Put metaphorically’, Koselleck once mused, ‘concepts are like joints linking language and the extra-linguistic world’.39
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