Thinking solidarity and translation together: Towards a new definition of solidarity

Abstract

In a cross-disciplinary roundtable discussion on the feminist politics of translation, Judith Butler (Nagar et al., 2017, p. 113) aptly notes that “there can be no solidarity without translation, and certainly no global solidarity”. This article is the first dedicated attempt to define solidarity from within translation studies: it redefines the concept to foreground the role of translation, understood as a hermeneutic, interpersonal and semiotic process, in solidarity development. The article is also the first to bring together scholarship on solidarity from philosophy, political science and sociology, on the one hand, and translation studies, on the other. I show that insights from translation studies supplement scholarship on solidarity in the other disciplines, where translation is largely overlooked. I also apply analytical categories from those disciplines to discussions of solidarity in translation studies and demonstrate the de facto different understandings of solidarity behind translation scholars’ use of the term, thus initiating a discipline-wide theoretical conversation on the concept. Moreover, upon noticing that the role of translation in generating solidarity is not captured in any existing definition, I redefine solidarity as a sense of interconnection and commonality in difference – developed through caring, careful and inherently incomplete translation – that pursues inclusion and impels action towards common good. Finally, I signal how the definition can inform our understanding of the interlingual human translator as an active agent, adept at forging and facilitating solidarity.