Translating worlds : the epistemological space of translation / edited by William F. Hanks and Carlo Severi

Set against the backdrop of anthropology’s recent focus on various “turns” (whether ontological, ethical, or otherwise), this pathbreaking volume returns to the question of knowledge and the role of translation as a theoretical and ethnographic guide for twenty-first century anthropology, gathering together contributions from leading thinkers in the field. Since Ferdinand de Saussure and Franz Boas, languages have been seen as systems whose differences make precise translation nearly impossible. And still others have viewed translation between languages as principally indeterminate. The contributors here argue that the challenge posed by the constant confrontation between incommensurable worlds and systems may be the most fertile ground for state-of-the-art ethnographic theory and practice. Ranging from tourism in New Guinea to shamanism in the Amazon to the globally ubiquitous restaurant menu, the contributors mix philosophy and ethnography to redefine translation not only as a key technique for understanding ethnography but as a larger principle in epistemology. Contents 6 List of Contributors 8 Introduction - Translating worlds: The epistemological space of translation - William F. Hanks and Carlo Severi 12 Chapter One - The space of translation - William F. Hanks 32 Chapter Two - Transmutating beings: A proposal for an anthropology of thought - Carlo Severi 62 Chapter Three - Powers of incomprehension: Linguistic otherness, translators and political structure in New Guinea tourism encounters - Rupert Stasch 100 Chapter Four - Healing translations: Moving between worlds in Achuar shamanism - Anne-Christine Taylor 128 Chapter Five - Bilingual language learning and the translation of worlds in the New Guinea Highlands and beyond - Alan Rumsey 158 Chapter Six - Culinary subjectification: The translated world of menus and orders - Adam Yuet Chau 186 Chapter Seven - All translation is radical translation - Bruce Mannheim 210 Chapter Eight - Acting translation: Ritual and prophetism in twenty-first-century indigenous Amazonia - Carlos Fausto and Emmanuel de Vienne 232 Chapter Nine - Words and worlds: Ethnography and theories of translation - John Leavitt 270 Chapter Ten - On the very possibility of mutual intelligibility - G. E. R. Lloyd 306 Index 324