Society as Translation
Bachmann-Medick's project situates research concepts found in cultural translation studies in a comprehensive way. The idea is to develop a new view of society as a set of relations shaped by translations. The following social »trading zones« stand at the heart of the project: migration, human rights controversies, transcultural contacts, disciplinary entanglements, and interrelations between cultural research and art. Transitions, ruptures, and shifts between different contexts are explored in regard to their need and potential for translation, understood as a category of analysis and action. Seen as constitutive of society, translation unfolds through a broader, multipolar understanding of its functions. Translation processes are examined with regard to how they facilitate additional social and action-oriented references points instead of merely invoking an »original.« Is translation becoming indispensable in our present societies? Does translation provide a mode of reflection and mediate action?
Doris Bachmann-Medick is Senior Research Fellow at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC), Justus Liebig University Giessen. She held numerous appointments as Visiting Professor, recently at the universities of Graz, Göttingen, UC Irvine, Cincinnati, and Georgetown University at Washington, DC. Her main fields of research are cultural theory, Kulturwissenschaften, literary anthropology, and translation studies.
gem. mit Jens Kugele und Ansgar Nünning (Hg.), Futures of the Study of Culture. Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Global Challenges, Berlin, Boston 2020 (Druckausgabe und Open Access); gem. mit Jens Kugele (Hg.), Migration. Changing Concepts, Critical Approaches, Berlin, Boston 2018; Cultural Turns. Neuorientierungen in den Kulturwissenschaften, 6. Aufl., Reinbek 2018 (engl. Cultural Turns. New Orientations in the Study of Culture, Berlin, Boston 2016; polnisch 2012; russisch 2017; koreanisch 2021).
Gesellschaft lebt von Übersetzungsvorgängen. Nicht nur von Sprach- und Textübersetzung, sondern vor allem von sozialer und kultureller Übersetzung. Doch müsste hier nicht ein neues Übersetzungsverständnis entwickelt werden, das der traditionellen Zweipoligkeit entgegensteht und neue Handlungsmöglichkeiten freisetzt?