"The Construction of the ‘Other’; A Question of Translation and the Promise of Legibility " In: EUROPEAN SUMMER SCHOOL FOR CULTURAL STUDIES. Legibility. 20-24 June. Leiden-Amsterdam 2016 (original) (raw)

Abstract

Foreign cultures have been depicted and established as the ‘Other’ in the collective imaginary by means of processes, that have been compared with translation especially in the case of ethnographical works. Since the word itself implies the promise of a certain transparent legibility, translation has been understood as a sort of transfer or decoding. That is to say, cultures and cultural phenomena are textualized and made legible in order to be understood. Reflecting on this conception of legibility means, on the one hand, to be aware of its arbitrariness, since it assigns to foreign cultures occidental signs in the name of accessibility and understanding. On the other hand, it is directly related to the belief in hierarchical and binary concepts such as original/copy; author/translator; or West/Other, which are traditional marks of the so often criticized occidental metaphysics. A critical examination from a historical perspective will serve as an example of how indigenous cultures from South America were made legible and intended to be deciphered within Eurocentric ethnological discourses. In this context, I aim to show how cultural and historical difference impacts legibility by means of translation, destabilizing given epistemological frameworks. This approach makes it possible to re-evaluate key concepts for the study of cultures, which still contribute to the persistence of Eurocentric epistemological constructs that reaffirm asymmetrical relationships and essentialist discourses of the ‘West’ and the ‘Other.’

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