Theory, Culture & Society 23(2-3): Problematizing Global Knowledge (2006)

In this special issue the TCS editorial board, along with colleagues in East and South-East Asia and other parts of the world, ventured in ‘encyclopaedic explorations’ in order to “rethink knowledge under the impact of globalization and digitization. The issue features over 150 entries and supplements on a range of topics which are addressed in terms of their relevance to knowledge formation, by contributors writing from a wide range of perspectives and different parts of the world. The entries and supplements are gathered under three main headings: metaconcepts, metanarratives and sites and institutions.”

Edited by Mike Featherstone, Couze Venn, Ryan Bishop and John Phillips, with Pal Ahluwalia, Roy Boyne, Beng Huat Chua, John Hutnyk, Scott Lash, Maria Esther Maciel, George Marcus, Aihwa Ong, Roland Robertson, Bryan Turner, Shiv Visvanathan, Shunya Yoshimi
With an Introduction by Mike Featherstone and Couze Venn
Publisher Sage, 2006
616 pages

Publisher

PDF

Barbara Cassin (ed.): Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon (2004–) [FR, EN]

“This is an encyclopedic dictionary of close to 400 important philosophical, literary, and political terms and concepts that defy easy–or any–translation from one language and culture to another. Drawn from more than a dozen languages, terms such as Dasein (German), pravda (Russian), saudade (Portuguese), and stato (Italian) are thoroughly examined in all their cross-linguistic and cross-cultural complexities. Spanning the classical, medieval, early modern, modern, and contemporary periods, these are terms that influence thinking across the humanities. The entries, written by more than 150 distinguished scholars, describe the origins and meanings of each term, the history and context of its usage, its translations into other languages, and its use in notable texts. The dictionary also includes essays on the special characteristics of particular languages–English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

Originally published in French, this one-of-a-kind reference work is now available in English for the first time, with new contributions from Judith Butler, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Ben Kafka, Kevin McLaughlin, Kenneth Reinhard, Stella Sandford, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jane Tylus, Anthony Vidler, Susan Wolfson, Robert J. C. Young, and many more.The result is an invaluable reference for students, scholars, and general readers interested in the multilingual lives of some of our most influential words and ideas.”

The book has been or is in the process of being translated into Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Portuguese (5 Vols, scheduled 2009-11), Romanian (scheduled 2013), Russian, Spanish, and Ukrainian (3 Vols, 2009-13, (2), (3)).

First published in French as Vocabulaire européen des philosophies: Dictionnaire des intraduisibles, Seuil/Le Robert, Paris, 2004.

English edition
Translated by Steven Rendall, Christian Hubert, Jeffrey Mehlman, Nathanael Stein, and Michael Syrotinski
Translation edited by Emily Apter, Jacques Lezra and Michael Wood
Publisher Princeton University Press, 2014
Translation/Transnation series
ISBN 0691138702, 9780691138701
1344 pages

Untranslatables and their Translations (Barbara Cassin, Transeuropéennes, 2009, in French, English, Arabic and Turkish)
Commentary (Jacques Lezra, video, 12 min, 2014, in English)
Wikipedia (FR)

Project website (archived)
Publisher (FR)
Publisher (EN)

Vocabulaire européen des philosophies – Échantillon IMAGE (French, HTML version of 30 entries related to the notion of image)
Dictionary of Untranslatables (English, EPUB, PDF)

Blurting in A & L [Art & Language] (1973/2002) [English/German]

Blurting in A & L is a printed booklet whose content is a dictionary with blurts or ‘annotations’. The annotations were written by the members of Art & Language Ian Burn, Michael Corris, Preston Heller, Joseph Kosuth, Andrew Menard, Mel Ramsden and Terry Smith.

“The project began as a collaboration among Art & Language members in New York City. In weekly meetings from January to July 1973, eight participants produced written statements called ‘annotations’ or ‘blurts’ on topics ranging from the ordinary to the abstruse (art, learning, ambiguity, heuristics, stimulus-meaning). In each subsequent meeting the group would return with new statements that ‘went on’ from the last week’s annotations. In the end, through the efforts of Michael Corris and Mel Ramsden the comments were compiled in a handbook. In all, some 400 odd entries were edited and grouped according to subheadings with vague quasi-logical connectors linking them to one another.

Since the connections among the entries were many-to-many, readers could choose their own course through the material, which blurred the boundary between passive reader and active participant. This was a key ideology of Art & Language – the idea that membership was permeable or, as one participant put it, ‘a function of participation’.” (from a commentary by Chris Gilbert, Mute, 2002)

An online version installed by ZKM, Karlsruhe, in 2002 includes articles which contextualize Blurting in A & L within the activities of the group in the 1970s. Present and former members of Art & Language (Michael Baldwin, Michael Corris, Philip Pilkington, Mel Ramsden) summarize and reflect on their activities. Thomas Dreher embeds Blurting in A & L within the proceedings of the discourse of Art & Language.

Blurting in A&L: An Index of Blurts and Their Concatenation (the Handbook) Constitutes a Problematic; That Is, You Can’t (at Least Not Without Deliberation) Ignore Possible Pathways Without Losing Embeddedness (Ideolects); Deliberation (Here, the Issue of Going-On Becomes a Self-Conscious Construction for the Reader) Admits Broader Reflection of a Context of Our/Your/Other Activities: Namely, the Structure of Our/Your Language/Culture and (the Prospect of) Revisability of Our/Your Language/Culture
Edited by Michael Corris, Mel Ramsden
Publisher Art & Language Press, New York, and The Mezzanine, Nova Scotia College of Art, Halifax, 1973
92 pages

Online version and accompanying publication edited by Thomas Dreher, 2002.

Announcement of the hypertext version (Syndicate, 2002)

Blurting in A & L (1973, HTML)
Blurting in A & L Online (English, 2002, HTML)
Blurting in A & L Online (German, 2002, HTML)