Ma(r)king the Difference : Multiculturalism and the Politics of Translation

This research delivers a conceptual reconstruction of the trajectory of concepts used to mark qualitative differences among identities from the 16th to the 21st century in central Europe and the Americas. The surplus lies in the inclusion of colonial history in the genealogy of Western political thought and ideas, as well as in the postcolonial discussion of multiculturalism. The manuscript deals with the power and authority of translation providing the reader with an insight into the history of colonial racism through a deep conceptual analysis of three historical debates that have not been previously discussed together. By linking the so-called "Indian Question", the "Jewish Question" and the multicultural question, this thesis includes a valuable critical revision of the origins of Humanism in colonial times and contexts and an original critique to the power and violence of language in ma(r)king differences, which is described in terms of translation. This thesis was selected among the three best dissertations in critical social thinking of the year 2019 by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. About the author Tania Mancheno is a political scientist, an independent critical researcher and a lecturer at the Department of Geography, at the University of Hamburg. She teaches on critical space theory, conceptual history and urban multiculturalism. Mancheno is an associate researcher at the centre "Hamburg's (post-)colonial legacy" Acknowledgments 8 Contents 10 1 Introduction: Intertwining Multiculturalism and Translation 12 2 Translation and Culture—in Five Currents of Thought 30 2.1 Translation Studies 31 2.2 Cultural Studies 40 2.3 Postcolonial Studies 41 2.4 Black Decolonial Studies 44 2.5 Critical Translation Studies 46 3 Translation as Method 54 3.1 Translation in Conceptual History 57 3.2 Koselleck on Concepts and Identities 59 3.3 Benjamin on Translatability 64 3.4 Benjamin on Fidelity 70 3.5 Fanon on Migration as Translation 72 3.6 Fanon on Untranslatability 78 4 Translation and the Question of Minorities 83 5 Translation: Moral Imperative or Colonial Question? 85 6 Translation in the Valladolid Debate 88 6.1 The Barbarian as a Hermeneutical Problem 89 6.2 The Indian Question: the Birth of Transcontinental Historiography 94 6.3 Translation in the Colonial Context: The Original Appropriation 102 6.4 Translating the Gentile into the Indian 106 6.5 The Valladolid Debate: Toleration and/as Cannibalism 112 6.6 Redefining the Difference’s Translatability 124 7 Translation and the Jewish Question 129 7.1 The Jewish Question in National Historiography 130 7.2 Translation in the National Context: Bauer and Marx 137 7.3 Translation as Emancipation 148 7.4 On the Translatability of Jewishness into National History 155 7.5 Redefining the Jewish Difference Through Orientalism 166 8 Translating Multiculturalism 171 8.1 Multiculturalism and the Migrating History of Minorities 171 8.2 Translation in the Multicultural Context: Kymlicka and Taylor 181 8.3 On the Translation From Indigenous into National Minorities 187 8.4 Multiculturalism as the New Public Virtue 199 8.5 The Muslim Difference in Multiculturalism 206 9 Conclusions 218 9.1 Historicizing Multiculturalism 218 9.2 The Politics of Translation in Multiculturalism 221 References 230