Translation as epistemicide: conceptual limits and possibilities

When does translating a text in the human sciences enrich another culture and when is it an act of imposition? This essay examines the role of translation in the struggle for cultural hegemony. The intent is to move away from a reductive analysis where a translated text is either imperialist, or emancipatory, or simply neutral and unjudgeable. Instead, I seek to enlarge and elaborate the vocabulary for speaking about the role of translational crosspollination and the machinations of power. I center on the limits of “epistemicide” as an analytic device (Sousa Santos). Epistemicide refers not to the corruption of some essential message in the text itself, but rather to cultural destruction of the source or target culture through translation. Such a description would identify how a term or a text is located in a receiving culture vis-a-vis other terms, other signifiers, how those signifiers may have their own history of connection across languages through being paired together by translators, and more generally the various ways in which different languages and cultures are interconnected. I illustrate by looking at attempts by theorists to characterize the translation of specialized vocabulary in critical race studies, queer studies, and postmodernism.