Translation of “Normative Orders” and the Limits of Translation

(Sakine Subasi-Piltz)

As anthropologists and philosophers, we ask: How can we, standing within our own native normative orders, gain insight into and knowledge about other normative orders, whose sanctions and justifications we cannot interpret, and whose structures do not make sense to us?  Moreover, how can we justify using sanctions to enforce our normative orders against other normative orders, thus pitting our understanding of justice and fairness against other vocabularies of justification?  In philosophical and anthropological discourses, there has been a long debate in this context about “translation.”  At the present time, the “translation” debate centers on post-colonial theory, and our panel should touch on that body of theory as well.

If we try to analyze “translation” within and between normative orders, a question of methodology arises: What are the differences of process between how insiders decode normative orders and how outsiders decode them?  It is important to know how the different translation processes work and how the act of translation influences the content of what is translated.  Thus two different questions are presented: (1) How can we, standing within one normative order, describe another?  (2) How is it possible to create new narratives of justification that can be translated into multiple normative orders—such as universal human rights?

Since questions about mediation between different normative orders arise in interdisciplinary contexts (including international law and politics, history, and studies of global justice), we would be pleased to receive a broad variety of papers.

Sonntag, 25.10.
IG Farben-Gebäude 1.411

13.00-13.30 Uhr    
Jeanette Ehrmann (Frankfurt): Traveling, Translating and Transplanting Human Rights  – zur  Kritik  der Menschenrechte  aus  postkolonial-feministischer Perspektive

13.30-14.00 Uhr    
Stefan Skupien (Berlin): Rückgriff  auf  Tradition(en):  Kwasi Wiredus  Konsensethik  als Übersetzungsleistung

14.00-14.30 Uhr   
Sarah Speck (Berlin): Übersetzungen  von  Mutterschaft. Postkolonialer Transfer von Wissen in den SOS-Kinderdörfern

14.30-14.45 Uhr      
Kaffeepause

14.45-15.15 Uhr    
Riem Spielhaus (Berlin): Feministische  Ansätze der Koranhermeneutik zum Thema „häusliche Gewalt“

15.15-15.45 Uhr   
Nikita Dhawan (Frankfurt): Comment

15.45-16.15 Uhr   
Susanne Schröter (Frankfurt): Comment