Theorizing is not abstraction but horizontal translation

Abstract

ABSTRACT The literature on theorizing usually implicitly assumes that theorizing is writing. A recent focus on theoretical diagrams seeks to correct this idea. But even this focus on diagrams measures them against writing. Instead, taking up ideas developed by the sociology of translation, I propose to understand theorizing as a specific kind of translation, namely horizontal translation. Horizontal translations create new worlds through conceptual invention and re-definition and by creating new geometries of how concepts relate to each other. Because such relationships are geometric forms, rather than sequential texts, diagrams are core media of theoretical work, because they allow the visualization of such conceptual forms.