Podemos: Politics as a “task of translation”

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on the central role that translation – understood in both a linguistic and a conceptual sense – plays within the emergence and evolution of the Spanish party Podemos, created in 2014 in response to the new social and political cycle opened with the 15M/“indignados” movement of 2011. On the one hand, the translation of political concepts developed by Antonio Gramsci, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe has played a significant role in the construction of the political discourse mobilized by Podemos. On the other hand, an understanding of political communication in terms of translation has shaped Podemos’s discourse to a significant extent. Drawing on these analyses, the article argues that an important part of Podemos’s strengths and weaknesses are indebted to translation practices, and opens the door to a wider understanding of politics in terms of translation.