ABSTRACT

This article explores the intricate relationship between translational, transnational and transdisciplinary epistemologies. I argue that even though translation is present in transnational and transdisciplinary knowledge-making, an epistemology based on translation as a practice of knowledge-making needs to go beyond its apparent ubiquity. I support my argument by using the political anthology Die große Regression as a case in point. Conceived by an in-house editor of the German publishing house Suhrkamp, this multilingual collection of essays addresses current societal and political developments, with an explicit transnational readership in mind. Published simultaneously in English, French, German and Italian and later translated into many other languages, the collection offers transdisciplinary perspectives presented by a diverse range of scholars, journalists and public intellectuals. This chapter locates translational moments in the transnational and transdisciplinary approaches chosen in this anthology within the translators’ textual and paratextual choices and discusses the strategies adopted in translating social and political concepts. Despite translation being a defining characteristic of the anthology and of transnational and transdisciplinary forms of knowledge-making in general, and even though translation has established itself as a master trope of theory building, translational ubiquity is not accompanied by critical reflection on translation as a practice of knowledge-making, a prerequisite to the elaboration of critical epistemologies of translation.