Translations of theory books become political interventions in local nationalist struggles.

Evidence

But in cases where a clear stimulus can be detected, the Open Society Institute’s broad campaign to transform the political cultures of Eastern Europe and the states of the former Soviet Union in a liberal and pluralist direction, is easily the most conspicuous. Teachers and students who spent time in the United States or the United Kingdom, where IC had been normalized as a textbook from the early 1990s, surely played a role. Yet the most instructive cases are those where translators and publishers had motives beyond the immediately paedagogic. The Serbo-Croat version of 1990 came from the hope of Silva Meznaric and her associates that it might help the struggle to save ‘Yugoslavia’ from bloody self-destruction. Wu Rwei-ren’s version was meant to bolster the nerve of Taiwanese nationalism by explaining comparatively its late emergence, and by undermining Peking’s claim to the island on the basis, not only of Chinese nationalism, but also ‘ancestral tradition’ inherited from Manchu dynasts. The Greek translation, as we have seen, was part of an endeavour to check mindless local chauvinism over ‘Macedonia,’ and to criticize the parties of the Left for craven or unscrupulous adoption of essentially right-wing nationalist positions. Similarly, The Open University of Israel’s Hebrew translation, with an introduction by a well-known Palestinian Israeli, was part of an attempt to resist the long slide towards apartheid in the Likud-ruled state. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 827

Categorization

• XREF: Directly scaffolds how theory travels as contested political ammunition into nationalism debates — the exact transmission mechanism Islamophobia readings will assume about concepts like Orientalism. — connects to: Translation covers can embed nationalist mythology within the target culture — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 791; Translations adapt theoretical texts to local literary canons — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 790; A translation can be deployed as an explicit intervention against state ideology — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 813 (+2 more)
• SEED: An essay angle: how a single academic text gets weaponized differently in Serbia, Taiwan, Greece, and Israel — translation as political improvisation.

Related

• Nationalist theory translations were politically deployed to intervene in local conflicts (similarity 0.91)
• A translation can be deployed as an explicit intervention against state ideology (similarity 0.83)
• Translations adapt theoretical texts to local literary canons (similarity 0.82)
• Translation covers can embed nationalist mythology within the target culture (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Nationalist intellectuals depended on small, powerful literate reading publics as consumers #corroborates (0.80) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 301
• Historical discourse functioned as an instrument forged in struggles over power. #corroborates (0.72) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 151