Translation: The Mother Tongue of a Future Society?

In recent years, "cultural translation" has become one of the key concepts within cultural theory. It is supposed not only to overcome exclusivist or essentialist conceptions of culture as well as the theoretical shortcomings of multiculturalism, but also to provide perspectives for a new and productive dealing with cultural differences, for a new way of thinking universality, and even for a new "European language" based upon the practices of translation. However, this discourse relies upon some basic assumptions of cultural theories, privileging "culture" as the cardinal sphere of human action and thus consigning social and political change to cultural practices. It does not take into account what we call culturalization, i.e. the - depoliticizing - re-articulation of societal and political issues in terms of culture. Thus, the concept of cultural translation gets stuck in its own premises - it reduces itself to the cultural sphere, leaving the existing political frameworks and mechanisms (based on identitarian principles and related to the nation-state, e.g.) untouched. The project "Translation: The Mother Tongue of a Future Society?" takes the new translational paradigm seriously, yet interweaves the analysis of the social and political potentials of translation with a critical investigation into the process of culturalization. It examines its theoretical and political implications, yet relates the crucial concepts that it entails (like hybridisation) also to issues such as the re-articulation of labor or the re-arrangement of political life in present societies. It thus asks for the potentials of an effective application of the translational paradigm, and this not only on a theoretical level, but also on the level of an exchange process with different groups of practitioners of cultural translation.