Europe as a Translational Space: The Politics of Heterolinguality

It is assumed that the project of European integration has reached its critical moment - an essential decision about concrete forms of a transnational democracy that are supposed to rearticulate and qualitatively transcend the existing concept of the democratic nation-state. However, for a transnational democracy to function, it too needs a public space, and for this public space to fulfil its democratic function, it must speak a common language. Which language should the European public of the future speak? We are convinced that the answer to this question is neither a single national language, nor a mere mechanical sum of them. In other words, if the vision of a common European public is ever to become reality, it must escape not only the parochial monolinguality of a national public sphere, but also its counterpart, the concept of multilinguality, which is still at work in today`s European Union, where the multiplicity of linguistic realities and practices is predominantly conceived of as a mere cluster of languages and the respective communities. The European example, however, also shows very clearly the insufficiencies of such a model, since it hardly matches, neither theoretically nor practically, the recomposition of European societies linked with new modes of movement and current migration processes. Since the linguistic commonality of Europe can be imagined only as a sort of translational practice, the decisive question is now, on which linguistic (and translational) concept to ground this practice, if not on the idea of a simple plurality of national languages, i.e., of multilinguality. In contrast, we suggest the concept of heterolinguality. It can provide, as we believe, a strong tool for a reconsideration and reinvention of not only linguistic, but also cultural, educational and political practices that meet the actual processes of social recomposition and new forms of subjectification under the condition of globalization. Considering that the assumption of given and inherently homogeneous language entities no longer provides the basis for an examination of linguistic and translational processes, analyses can consequently not be reduced to "language communities". Therefore, an examination of the heterolingual condition (for instance of Europe) has to take into account various kinds of hybrid languages, broken languages, processes of what in sociolinguistics is called "code mixing", as well as various ways in which those language uses are politically, socially, economically informed, reaching far beyond the idea of different linguistic or cultural "backgrounds". Heterolinguality is more than a solution to a linguistic problem. It is a concept on which we can base our imagination of a common European future.

The project Europe as a Translational Space: The Politics of Heterolinguality focused mainly on the political and social implications and consequences of translational processes. From the outset, we didnt understand the name of Europe as designating a pre-determined space, within which translational processes take place, but as a socially fabricated and contended reality constituted, at least in part, precisely through translational processes. Translation, on the other hand, was not understood as a secondary linguistic phenomenon becoming necessary when, without it, communication between presupposed linguistic unities is no longer granted, but as a primary phenomenon of the articulation of social relations. The concept of heterolinguality or heterolingual address, as introduced by the translation theorist Naoki Sakai, provided an important theoretical pivot for our project. It avoids the alternative between monolinguality and multilinguality, based on the assumption of homogeneous languages and linguistic communities (and informing, for example, the majority of European debates on issues like integration or migration), and instead raises a set of simple questions: How are social relations being articulated in situations of linguistic difference? Which forms of address traverse this articulation, i.e., who is being addressed in what way? And which political, economic, institutional interests inform these forms of address while they are simultaneously called into question through informal, and often fragile, translational communities? In a number of both print and online publications, an international conference in Vienna as well as a series of workshops realised in Aubervilliers (Parisian banlieue), Salzburg and Maribor those questions were not only discussed theoretically, with a view to providing elements of a cartography of Europe as a translational space. In collaboration with experts from fields like second language pedagogy, interpretation in asylum procedures or youth work in post-migratory contexts, we also discussed new approaches and perspectives based on modes of translation that, instead of conceiving of the necessities and realities of translation in terms of a communication deficit (often ascribed to just one side, especially within debates on migration), see it as a chance to do justice to the transformation and recomposition of contemporary societies.