Today, English is arguably the dominant language of academic knowledge production. For many scholars, this means that not only reading or writing, but thought itself - and particularly thinking with others - happens in a language other than their own. While there is increasing attention to the colonial and imperial roots of the dominance of English as the language of scholarly communication, we less often reflect on what this means for thinking across linguistic differences.
In this conversation with Jana Bacevic, philosopher and political theorist Adriana Zaharijevic reflects on thinking in translation, across political, cultural, and geographical contexts, and the challenges of “translating” or bringing contemporary theorists like Judith Butler to places commonly seen as (semi)periphery.
Adriana Zaharijević is a Principal Fellow at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade. Her work combines political philosophy, feminist theory and social history. She is the author of four monographs and her texts have been translated into Albanian, German, Hungarian, Italian, Macedonian, Portuguese, Slovenian, Turkish, and Ukrainian. She has also translated feminist theory and philosophy into Serbian for two decades.
Jana Bacevic is a social and political theorist. Jana is Assistant Professor at Durham University, UK; editor at The Philosopher; and associate fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College, USA. Her work engages with politics and ethics of knowledge production, as well as questions of agency and reciprocity in the context of postliberalism.