FROM LANGUAGE TO LANGUAGE

A broad and vital philosophy of translation as a decolonizing force that serves to build a common humanity.

Starting from the premise that all human languages are of equal value, noted Senegalese philosopher Diagne sets out to demonstrate the far-reaching consequences of translation and how it can foster a common humanity. He writes, “Through the work of translation, languages come to know each other. From language to language.” Recognizing and pushing against ideas of cultural dominance, Diagne looks at how the legacy of colonialism has been embedded in texts, as translations, even in “translations” of visual language. Exploring the example of appropriation of African artifacts in modernist art—from Matisse, Picasso, and other avant-garde artists—he concludes that “primitivism is a Eurocentric and lazy concept.” Other asymmetries between languages and cultures have resulted in the predominance of certain philosophical concepts that have implications for the grammar of philosophy, the metaphysics of being, and logic. For example, Arabic grammarians have criticized translators of Aristotle for trying to “pass off categories of thought in a broad sense, [when they were] merely categories inherent in the language spoken by the Stagirite.” In another example, he unpacks how a metaphysical “notion of being would be entirely different” in the West African tonal language Ewe. The book itself is intertextual, emphasizing the collaborative act of knowledge building, as Diagne traces the evolution and lineage of his thinking in elegant prose. The author cites numerous late cultural theorists and philosophers, including Henri Bergson, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and Léopold Sédar Senghor, as well as present-day figures, among them Kwame Anthony Appiah, Philippe Dagen, and Sandra Laugier.

Alongside George Steiner’s After Babel, a seminal work that furthers translation scholarship.