Untying the Mother Tongue:
Daniel Boyarin: Philological Investigations
The Concept of Cultural Translation in American Religious Studies
” “Jedenfalls aber ist unsere philologische Heimat die Erde; die Nation kann es nicht mehr sein.” (Our philological home is the earth. It can no longer be the nation.)
Erich Auerbach, Philology and Weltliteratur (1952)
For many years, Daniel Boyarin has been engaged in a project to discover how or why it makes sense to speak of “religion” as existing or not at a given time and place. In this project, Wittgenstein has proven to be an increasingly consequential compagnon de route. Boyarin takes the Philosophical Investigations not so much as a work of academic philosophy but as an attempt to describe how language actually works, how human beings produce meaningful speech and writing. The central question treated in this presentation is adequacy of terms drawn from Euro-American languages to describe the cultures of alter. In order to adumbrate some answers to these questions the thinking of Talal Asad about cultural translation is pitted against that of J. Z. Smith.”
Here are a series of notes taken during a reading given by Daniel Boyarin at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry
on May 11th, 2016. Direct quotes are in quotations, the rest are my interpretations and quick reductions.
(These notes alone are intriguing and leading without my analysis or commentary)
Wittgenstein writes that philosophy must not interfere with actual use of language, but should only describe it.
The meaning of a word is revealed by its use within the language – meaning is not representation, it is use.
Researchers must look for and see the uses of words, understanding two concepts:
- Every new use adds nuance
- Interpretation of a word is affected by all prior uses known to the speaker and listener.
A word is placed into context only by “half-remembered words and phrases pulled out in seemingly appropriate usages.”
Wittgenstein describes language as a game – and the basic rule for interpretation of a word is “don’t think but look – look and see if there is something common to all.”
For a word to have meaning, it must exist. If a word doesn’t exist in culture, it has no meaning. However, it is not always the case that the concept doesn’t exist and especially so in regard to religion. So what about religion? Religion as a word must exist in language for it to imply meaning independent from day to day practice.
The phenomenon of religion certainly exists in all cultures, but whether a culture has a word for religion reveals the categorization of religion/practice in a culture.
Older cultures may not have recognized the existence of religion.
Wittgenstein states that “to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life.”
Boyarin: “A form of life is close to culture.” To investigate a language means to investigate a culture, what a language lacks by comparison, the culture has not comprised.
Different cultures have different forms of language – which leads to the question of the possibility of translation.
Our modern Western language is inadequate to describe or understand ancient cultures. We must strive to learn their languages.
As Walter Benjamin wrote, we must turn German (or English) into Greek, Hindi, Hebrew, and not vice versa. We should not try to represent their language systematically in our own lexicon – for in this, we are stuck in our own thought and language.
As an anecdote, English merchants refused to trade with Japan in the 19th century, until the Japanese could describe, or give a definition to their religious practice/s. Hence the Shinto religion had no unifying name until it was forced to be defined by the outside.
“Semantics shift with contact with other forms of life.”
Some definitions require great lengths, books, to define, even in semblance. It is hard work to render concepts/words closely into one another.
In one study, the word ‘religio’ was bracketed out of hundreds of different paragraphs describing religious practice, in an attempt to define ‘religio’ by context alone. It was impossible to derive the meaning of the word; this project gave only the sense of the range of uses.
Religion obscures much more than it reveals. Religion is a praxis – there may not be a term for it when it is wholly embedded as a mode of existence – as not categorized, segregated from other practices.
As an example, Boyarin gives an anecdote about Judeans using a festival, Pentecost, to plot a revolution. To the Judeans, this was a normal course of action – plotting a rebellion was no different than any other praxis, as politics and religion were integral to one another.
Those who opposed the actions of the Judeans criticized the use of Pentecost as a cover for subversive scheming. Those who supported their actions praised their craft. To the Judeans it was a matter of course, not a scheme.
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The task of translating culture is not to reduce an unknown to a known. We must progress beyond the idea that the “history that I want is the history of the present” illuminating our position by events of the past. Other language also functions as a complex language game, and shakes our grip on the notion that our rationale is superior to those of the past. We must study the validity of other language games, and stop assuming that all the past leads into Enlightenment.
The task is to listen to others, to become strangers to ourselves.
The deformation of our language is imperative in order to translate.
Religion can exist without anyone knowing it does.
We must deform/imagine our life without the word religion.
We must find others in the past and adapt our language to meet theirs.
To avoid being alone in the world: allow the other to be herself.
By allowing others to be themselves, we investigate other forms of life and the possibilities therein – we must surround ourselves with possibilities.
By deforming/converting language it changes our life form – there is a possibility of losing original language, and blurring culture, but we must continually become something new — not collapse into a singular language/culture, but to expand and allow for multiplicities of existences.
In avoiding reducing an unknown to a known – how do we know what we see/hear? In the enterprise of seeking, by turning our eyes towards our own practices in the game of knowledge, requires the removal of knowledge and NOT to seek reducing unknown to known, but finding the unknown in our own language and lives.