Presented as part of the Humanities Research Centre Seminar Series

This talk will examine the consequences of living in the age of ‘Anglobalisation’ for philosophy and the world at large. Central to this is the problem that English linguistic hegemony can serve, on the one hand, as a potentially useful vehicle for the universal diffusion of philosophical discourse and, on the other hand, that in the absence of a genuine ‘universal characteristic,’ the dominance of one tongue in philosophy can threaten to produce unjust forms of influence and monopoly that philosophy is supposed to challenge, and from which it is meant to liberate us. I will analyse this problem by comparing the ways in which Jürgen Habermas, Barbara Cassin and Jacques Derrida treat the issue of translation in philosophy. Examining the marginalisation of translation in philosophy by way of Habermas, I will identify how the dominant perspective in philosophy is one that discounts translation as central issue for philosophical discourse. I will then compare how Barbara Cassin and Jacques Derrida treat the issue of translation, and outline three models of language – the transcendental unity model, the logology model, and the mono-poly (or Mèresprachig) model. I will criticise the former two, and defend the latter.

Oisín Keohane is currently a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto. Previously, he was a NRF Free-Standing Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Johannesburg (2012) and an IASH Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Edinburgh (2013). He completed his AHRC-funded PhD at the London School of Economics (LSE) in 2011. His thesis focused on philosophical nationalism. Presently, he works on philosophy and translation, theories of linguistic justice, and the philosophical dimensions of English as a world language. His work has been published in several journals, including Derrida Today, Nations and Nationalism, and Paragraph, and in books published by Routledge and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. He has also translated work by Marc Crépon into English with his wife, Elizabeth Geary Keohane.

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Image: "Johann Peter Hasenclever - Das Lesekabinett - Google Art Project" by b p k - Photo Agency / Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Andres Kilger