ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by discussing the general ambivalence toward translation in global sexuality studies and related fields and how that speaks to the deeper epistemological question of whether we can ever “know” other cultures in their own terms. The chapter then goes on to address the productive contribution Translation Studies can make to the field of global sexuality studies, by extending and enriching discussions of subaltern agency and of our understanding of the global circulation of sexual knowledge, while also exposing the persistent imperial asymmetries of the field. The chapter ends with a discussion of translation as part of a methodology that resists mastery in favor of “unease,” as theorized by Jack Halberstam in The Queer Art of Failure (2017) .
