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Translation and the Construction of Identity

Special Panel: The Politics of Interdisciplinary Research

Chaired by: Mona Baker and SUN Yifeng

In a recent book entitled Class, Nation and Identity: The Anthropology of Political Movements, Jeff Pratt (2003) uses the notions of ‘movement’ and ‘discourse’ to study identity formation and the development of political communities. ‘Movement’ covers the repertoire of political action (demonstrations, strikes, sit-ins, civil disobedience, etc.). ‘Discourse’ is the primary tool that allows the subject of a movement (a collectivity or community of people with similar outlook and interests) to articulate who they are and what they stand for. 

There is a sense in which emerging disciplines such as translation studies and intercultural studies experience and are shaped by processes and discourses akin to those of political movements. Translation studies, for example, has developed its own repertoire of activities and concrete structures: summer schools, research centres, corpora, associations of various kinds, online journals, databases of translators, encylcopedias, bibliographies, abstracting services, etc. It has also developed its own discourses, which often survive the decline of specific paradigms and research groups and become assimilated into other paradigms and other research centres. These discourses are at least in the first instance ‘borrowed’ from other movements, other disciplines and sub-disciplines. At the time they become adopted and promoted actively in translation and intercultural studies, the disciplines and sub-disciplines in question may have already declined or developed in very different directions.

Of the two, movement and discourse, discourse is arguably more important in the long run. As Pratt (2003:9) points out, “once in existence the discourse could survive the collapse of a political organisation, and of course be spread to other societies”. It is therefore particularly productive for those who wish to study and document the development of a political movement – or in our case of intellectual and academic collectivities – to scrutinise the discourses that emerge from and around the various activities in which members of the movement or discipline engage. 

This panel seeks submissions which describe and analyse the discourse that develops around the introduction of various disciplinary frameworks in translation and intercultural studies, a process which has a ‘politics’ of its own. In particular, contributors are invited to address the following and/or related issues: 

A further theme to be explored, especially in view of recent developments on the international scene (most notably the war on Iraq), is more political in the narrow sense of ‘politics’: 

• Discourses which generate ‘alibi’ communities. In particular, spontaneous (but structured) ‘conversions’ of academic communities into political/activist groups. This is a process of identity formation whereby sharedness qua scholarly outlook can be converted into sharedness qua political outlook, as can be seen in a number of recent initiatives in the field of translation. Examples of these initiatives can be found at the following sites:

http://web.tiscali.it/no-redirect-tiscali/traduttoriperlapace/

http://www.towerofbabel.com/map/

http://www.saltana.com.ar/pax/paxbabelica.htm

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