COSMOPOLITANISM AND THE POLITICS OF TRANSLATION

Translation has gained a central importance in recent accounts of cosmopolitanism which emphasise global interdependence and the interaction between different cultures and traditions. In this context, it becomes necessary to formulate a politics of translation that ques-tions some idealist assumptions about translation that are present in the sociological literature, specifies trans-lation as a fundamentally ethnocentric act, and formu-lates relevant strategies to confront this inherent ethno-centrism in order to open up translation to the difference of the other. Such politics consists in an extension of an ethics of translation based on linguistic hospitality, so that cultural asymmetries, inequalities and conflicts at a wider social level are addressed and political and normative responses to them can be devised from a cosmopolitan perspective. In this light, the relevance of a politics of translation as an alternative to a politics of identity is approached.