{"id":1749,"date":"2020-03-13T12:06:09","date_gmt":"2020-03-13T12:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/?p=1749"},"modified":"2020-03-13T12:06:13","modified_gmt":"2020-03-13T12:06:13","slug":"the-translation-of-transnational-concepts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/2020\/03\/13\/the-translation-of-transnational-concepts\/","title":{"rendered":"The Translation of Transnational Concepts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On the back of the purchase of Global Conceptual History: A Reader<\/em> (thank you again, Bernhard), I thought it at least warranted a discussion in a blog post. In their introduction, Margrit Pernau & Dominic Sachsenmaier argue for the importance of a consideration of conceptual history on a global scale as part of the furthering of our historical understandings, suggesting that \u2018it is through concepts\u2026 that actors make sense of their experiences and create the knowledge about the world they are living in, which in turn permits them to act meaningfully\u2019.[1] While existing scholarship has traced the movement of these concepts, in the form of both language and pictorial representations, across geographic boundaries, Pernau & Sachsenmaier suggest that there has been little focus on the linguistic borders that exist to define and divide nation-states. These play a significant role in global conceptual history, as we must consider the role of translation in the movement, understanding and application of these concepts. Indeed, as Pernau and Sachsenmaier suggest, the translations of these concepts into the appropriate language \u2018bring together the actors\u2019 interpretations of the world they are living in and constitute the basis for all meaningful action\u2019.[2]\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the discussion throughout the book is focused on the importance of linguistics in the global movement of concepts, as the act of translation has been recognised as a fundamental process that heavily influences the perception of the concept, and thus places the translator as a central actor in globalisation. However, in the context of my project, considering the movement of concepts transnationally from the United States of America to Northern Ireland, two English-speaking locations, such acts of linguistic translation do not occur. However, I think there is something to be said for cultural translation, dictated primarily by social, economic and political factors (amongst others), that influences the reception and application of these concepts when they move transnationally. Indeed, as Jani Marjanen suggests, \u2018transnational conceptual history can also debunk a more universalistic take on concepts by illustrating how the translation of concepts into new languages or political cultures always entails a reinterpretation and adaptation of the concepts\u2019.[3]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One particular concept that moved transnationally from the United States to Northern Ireland and can be seen to have been reinterpreted and adapted, is \u2018nonviolence\u2019. While defining the term is challenging, Mahatma Gandhi referred to the \u2018science of nonviolence\u2019 and suggested that the best results for social change were to be achieved when \u2018a mainly nonviolent action works as a catalyst for a mainly violent reaction\u2019.[4] Such an approach can be seen in both the American and Northern Irish contexts, but ultimately the difference came down to control. Although the movement in Northern Ireland had begun as a nonpartisan class-based struggle against discrimination, challenging the status quo through nonviolent means, the variety of aims that existed within the sub-groups who had combined under the umbrella of organisations such as the NICRA, whether religious, nationalist or otherwise, led to inconsistent approaches across the movement and a descent into episodes of unprovoked violence, and there was no possibility of effective leadership to prevent such activity. While the leaders of the movement (the \u2018translators\u2019 of the transnational concept), such as Eamonn McCann, had intended their nonviolent activity to illustrate and advocate for equal civil liberties and the benefits of socialism against the current system, this was superseded, through a manipulation of the \u2018translation\u2019, by a concern for the age-old story about the sovereignty of Northern Ireland and its rightful place inside or outside the United Kingdom. As Simon Prince suggests, \u2018the civil rights movement just became the current round in this struggle\u2019.[5]\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So perhaps there is something to be said for the role of history, politics and social understandings of the past in the failure of an effective cultural translation of the concept of \u2018nonviolence\u2019 from the American civil rights movement? Given Northern Ireland\u2019s violent past, were nonviolent methods, designed to provoke violent responses, ever going to work to achieve similar results to that they had achieved in the United States? These are questions that I want to explore further in my research. Prince argues that nonviolence \u2018was parasitic on violence and was ultimately more overwhelmed by violence\u2019 in Northern Ireland than in the United States and, as Martin Luther King said himself, \u2018the aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness\u2019; a theory that very much found reality in Northern Ireland.[6]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[1] Margrit Pernau & Dominic Sachsenmaier, \u2018Introduction\u2019 in Margrit Pernau & Dominic Sachsenmaier (eds.),\u00a0Global Conceptual History: A Reader<\/em>\u00a0(London, 2016), p. 3<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2] Ibid., p. 2<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3] Jani Marjanan, \u2018Transnational Conceptual History, Methodological Nationalism and Europe\u2019 in Willibald Steinmetz, Michael Freeden & Javier Fernandez-Sebastian (eds.), Conceptual History in the European Space<\/em> (New York, 2017), p. 143<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4] Simon Prince, \u2018Pushing Luck Too Far: \u201968, Northern Ireland and Nonviolence\u2019 in Daniel J. Sherman et al. (eds.),\u00a0The Long 1968: Revisions and New Perspectives\u00a0<\/em>(Bloomington, 2013), p. 141<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5] Ibid., p. 161<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6] Ibid., p. 160<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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