Untranslating machines : a genealogy for the ends of global thought / Jacques Lezra.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lezra, Jacques, 1960- author.

Series:

New Critical Humanities

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Humanities--Philosophy.

Humanities.

Globalization--Philosophy.

Globalization.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (222 pages).

Place of Publication:

London, [England] ; New York : Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017.

Summary:

On what basis can we establish an alternative to the unifying of cultures brought about by economic globalization? When ideas, like objects and words, can be translated and marketed everywhere, what forms of critique are available? Straddling the fields of political philosophy, comparative literature, animal studies, global studies, and political economy, Untranslating Machines proposes to this end a weakened, defective concept of “untranslatability.” The analytic frame of Jacques Lezra’s argument is rooted in Marx, Derrida and Wittgenstein. He moves historically from the moment when “translation” becomes firmly wed to mercantilism and to the consolidation of proto-national state forms, in European early modernity; to the current moment, in which the flow of information, commodities and value-creation protocols among international markets produces the regulative fantasy of a global, coherent market of markets. In a world in which translation and translatability have become a means and a model for the consolidation of a global cultural system, this book proposes an understanding of untranslatability that serves to limit the articulation between a globalized capitalist value-system and the figure and techniques of translation.

Contents:

Dogmas of translation

On contingency in translation

Nationum origo

Sovereignty or translation

What is possible in machine translation

The animal in translation.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781786605092

1786605090