I will frame my response to the wonderfully diverse essays in this collection from within this framework of the failure…
The failures and successes of translation
translation
Translative sedimentations in the Indian Ocean
Taking a different course, and drawing on a few techniques practiced in the Indian Ocean littoral in the seventeenth to…
Fieldwork in translation: Reflections on positionality and distance in Cairo
This reflection was born out of an encounter between two researchers working on the same urban space in Cairo, a…
Anthropological translations: Strategy, content, audience
Translation is an intimate, daily, and often frustrating experience in my life and work. While English has begun to colonize…
Racism and sectarianism
My use of Du Bois here is to think through fundamentally coeval, yet different, histories, vocabularies, and trajectories of discrimination…
Translating “courts” cautiously
Here I will draw out some translation lessons that my work on Indian dar ul qazas—often characterized as “Muslim courts”—has…
Sultan Bargash and Zanzibar’s cosmopolitan modernity
The context Stone Town Café in the old city of Zanzibar is located in the middle of the most stunning…
Is Baathism an Arabic word?
I started to reflect on why it should be that such an extremely limited range of Arabic-language terms appear to…
In the wake of conscription: Compradors or bricoleurs?
One of the central questions animating this forum underscores the importance of moving beyond “a focus on the application of…
Translation and the afterlives of Anglophone theory
This forum draws together scholars of religion, state, and society to initiate a conversation around translation and its place within…