ABSTRACT
For a building that never made it past destruction, the tower of Babel has cast a surprisingly long shadow. It has been a creative shadow, no doubt, and it has accordingly occasioned much growth and proliferation – of words, and other multifarious constructions. The shadow of the tower has also been an oppressive and constricting one, and a strange illustration too of what Yasmin Yildiz calls ‘the postmonolingual condition.’ After all, as Jacques Derrida asks, ‘in what tongue was the tower of Babel constructed and deconstructed?’ In what tongue and in what translation indeed? According to what ‘theology of translation’ and in what religion? Whereas the translation of religion, of the word ‘religion’ has come to be seen as a somewhat troubling, if persistently successful, enterprise, Derrida offers a different reading, and a different practice – or practices. Derrida challenges us to translate translation, to translate religion, and to ask, simultaneously, about the religion of translation.
