This article examines numerous conceptions of translation within the Marxist tradition. It begins with Antonio Gramsci’s theorisation of the concept before turning to the problem of Marxism in Latin America and how the Zapatistas have dealt with this problem. The aim is to shed light on a critical school of Marxist thinking, which requires that Marxism’s universalist claims be translated in response to changing historical conditions so that they may become concrete formulations capable of speaking to and intervening in concrete situations. Yet the Zapatistas go further by maintaining that translation must also occur between the universalist claims of Marxist theory and the competing universalist claims of indigenous Maya cosmology. The article thus underscores what can be gleaned from different modes of translation in terms of Marxism’s future and its capacity to enter into mutually beneficial alliances with distinct worldviews and ongoing social movements.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
Anderson, Kevin 2016, Marx on the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies, Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
Aricó, José 1978, Introduction to Mariátegui y los orígenes del marxismo latinoamericano, edited by José Aricó, pp. xi–lv, Mexico City: Cuadernos de Pasado y Presente.
Aricó, José 1980, ‘Mariátegui y la formación del partido socialista del Perú’, Socialismo y Participación, 11: 139–167.
Aricó, José 2005, La cola del diablo. Itinerario de Gramsci en América Latina, Buenos Aires: Siglo xxi.
Aricó, José 2014, Marx and Latin America, translated by David Broder, Historical Materialism Book Series, Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books.
Arnall, Gavin 2020a, Subterranean Fanon: An Underground Theory of Radical Change, New York: Columbia University Press.
Arnall, Gavin 2020b, ‘The Missed Encounter of Turupukllay: Marxism, Indigenous Communities, and Andean Culture in Yawar fiesta’, Radical Americas, 5, 1: 1–16.
Arnall, Gavin 2021, ‘Latin American Marxisms: Reading José Carlos Mariátegui and José Aricó Today’, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 29, 3: 489–499.
Arnall, Gavin, Susana Draper and Ana Sabau 2015, ‘José Aricó como lector de Gramsci’, in Gramsci en las orillas, pp. 141–170, Buenos Aires: La Cebra.
Badiou, Alain 2010, The Communist Hypothesis, translated by David Macey and Steve Corcoran, London: Verso.
Balibar, Étienne 2002, ‘Ambiguous Universality’, in Politics and the Other Scene, translated by Christine Jones, James Swenson and Chris Turner, pp. 146–176, London: Verso.
Balibar, Étienne 2020, On Universals: Constructing and Deconstructing Community, translated by Joshua David Jordan, New York: Fordham University Press.
Barrios de Chungara, Domitila and Moema Viezzer 1978, Let Me Speak! Testimony of Domitila, a Woman of the Bolivian Mines, translated by Victoria Ortiz, New York: Monthly Review Press.
Beigel, Fernanda 2003, El itinerario y la brújula: El vanguardismo estético-político de José Carlos Mariátegui, Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblios.
Benjamin, Walter 1996, ‘The Task of the Translator’, in Selected Writings, Volume 1, 1913–1926, edited by Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings, pp. 253–263, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Blaser, Mario and Marisol de la Cadena 2018, Introduction to A World of Many Worlds, edited by Marisol de la Cadena and Mario Blaser, pp. 1–22, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Boothman, Derek 2010, ‘Translation and Translatability: Renewal of the Marxist Paradigm’, in Ives and Lacorte (eds.) 2010, pp. 1–22.
Bosteels, Bruno 2011, The Actuality of Communism, London: Verso.
Bosteels, Bruno 2012, Marx and Freud in Latin America: Politics, Psychoanalysis, and Religion in Times of Terror, London: Verso.
Butler, Judith 2000, ‘Competing Universalities’, in Butler, Laclau and Žižek 2000, pp. 136–81.
Butler, Judith, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek 2000, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, London: Verso.
Carlucci, Alessandro 2014, Gramsci and Languages: Unification, Diversity, Hegemony, Historical Materialism Book Series, Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh 2008, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Chaudhary, Zahid 2012, ‘Subjects in Difference: Walter Benjamin, Frantz Fanon, and Postcolonial Theory’, differences, 23, 1: 166–171.
Communist International 1988 [1921], Guidelines on the Organizational Structure of Communist Parties, on the Methods and Content of Their Work, New York: Prometheus Books.
Conant, Jeff 2010, A Poetics of Resistance: The Revolutionary Public Relations of the Zapatista Insurgency, Oakland, CA: AK Press.
Coronado, Jorge 2009, The Andes Imagined: Indigenismo, Society, and Modernity, Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh University Press.
Cortés, Martín 2020, Translating Marx: José Aricó and the New Latin American Marxism, translated by Nicolas Allen, Historical Materialism Book Series, Leiden: Brill.
Coutinho, Carlos Nelson 2012, Gramsci’s Political Thought, Historical Materialism Book Series, Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books.
de Andrade, Oswald 1991, ‘Cannibalist Manifesto’, translated by Leslie Bary, Latin American Literary Review, 19, 38: 38–47.
Dean, Jodi 2012, The Communist Horizon, London: Verso.
de la Cadena, Marisol 2010, ‘Indigenous Cosmopolitics in the Andes: Conceptual Reflections beyond “Politics”’, Cultural Anthropology, 25, 2: 334–370.
Derrida, Jacques 1985, ‘Roundtable on Translation’, in The Ear of the Other, translated by Peggy Kamuf, pp. 93–162, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Douzinas, Costas and Slavoj Žižek (eds.) 2010, The Idea of Communism, London: Verso.
Ertürk, Nergis and Özge Serin 2016, ‘Marxism, Communism, and Translation: An Introduction’, boundary 2, 43, 3: 1–26.
Escobar, Arturo 2020, Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
EZLN 1997, ‘Cuarta declaración de la Selva Lacandona’, in Documentos y comunicados 3, pp. 79–89, Mexico City: Era.
Frosini, Fabio 2010, ‘On “Translatability” in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks’, in Ives and Lacorte (eds.) 2010, pp. 171–87.
García Linera, Álvaro 1991, De demonios escondidos y momentos de revolución. Marx y la revolución social en las extremidades del cuerpo capitalista, La Paz: Ofensiva Roja.
García Linera, Álvaro 2008, ‘Indianismo y marxismo: El desencuentro de dos razones revolucionarias’, in La potencia plebeya: Acción colectiva e identidades indígenas, obreras y populares en Bolivia, edited by Pablo Stefanoni, pp. 373–392, Argentina: Prometeo Libros.
García Linera, Álvaro 2015, ‘Indianism and Marxism: The Disparity between Two Revolutionary Rationales’, in Plebeian Power: Collective Action and Indigenous, Working-Class and Popular Identities in Bolivia, pp. 305–321, Historical Materialism Book Series, Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books.
Gilly, Adolfo 1998, ‘Chiapas and the Rebellion of the Enchanted World’, in Rural Revolt in Mexico: U.S. Intervention and the Domain of Subaltern Politics, edited by Daniel Nugent, pp. 261–333, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Godorecci, Barbara J. 1993, After Machiavelli: ‘Re-Writing’ and the ‘Hermeneutic Attitude’, West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.
Gonzalez, Mike 2019, In the Red Corner: The Marxism of José Carlos Mariátegui, Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books.
González Casanova, Pablo 2005, ‘The Zapatista “Caracoles”: Networks of Resistance and Autonomy’, Socialism and Democracy, 19, 3: 79–92.
Gramsci, Antonio 1994, ‘The Revolution Against Capital’, in Pre-Prison Writings, edited by Richard Bellamy, pp. 39–42, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gramsci, Antonio 1995, Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks, translated by Derek Boothman, London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Gramsci, Antonio 2001, Quaderni del carcere, edited by Valentino Gerratana, Turin: Einaudi.
Gramsci, Antonio 2005, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, New York: International Publishers.
Guevara, Ernesto ‘Che’ 2006, The Bolivian Diary, Melbourne: Ocean.
Gutiérrez Aguilar, Raquel 2014, Rhythms of the Pachakuti: Indigenous Uprisings and State Power in Bolivia, translated by Stacey Alba D. Skar, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Guzmán Reynoso, Abimael 1989, Guerra popular en el Perú. El pensamiento Gonzalo, Brussels: Luis Arce Borja.
Harootunian, Harry 2015, Marx After Marx: History and Time in the Expansion of Capitalism, New York: Columbia University Press.
Hearse, Phil (ed.) 2007, Take the Power to Change the World: Globalisation and the Debate on Power, London: Socialist Resistance.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 1991, The Philosophy of History, translated by J. Sibree, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Henck, Nick 2016, Insurgent Marcos: The Political-Philosophical Formation of the Zapatista Subcommander, Raleigh, NC: Editorial Contracorriente.
Holloway, John 1998, ‘Dignity’s Revolt’, in Zapatista! Reinventing Revolution in Mexico, edited by John Holloway and Eloína Peláez, pp. 159–198, London: Pluto Press.
Holloway, John 2005, Change the World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today, London: Pluto Press.
Ives, Peter 2004, Gramsci’s Politics of Language: Engaging the Bakhtin Circle and the Frankfurt School, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Ives, Peter and Rocco Lacorte 2010, ‘Introduction: Translating Gramsci on Language, Translation and Politics’, in Ives and Lacorte (eds.) 2010, pp. 1–15.
Ives, Peter and Rocco Lacorte (eds.) 2010, Gramsci, Language, and Translation, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Jameson, Fredric 2010, ‘The Three Names of the Dialectic’, in Valences of the Dialectic, pp. 3–70, London: Verso.
Khasnabish, Alex 2010, Zapatistas: Rebellion from the Grassroots to the Global, London: Zed Books.
Klein, Hilary 2015, Compañeras: Zapatista Women’s Stories, New York: Seven Stories Press.
Kohan, Néstor 2008, De Ingenieros al Che: Ensayos sobre el marxismo argentino y latinoamericano, Havana: Instituto Cubano de Investigación Cultural Juan Marinello.
Laclau, Ernesto 2000, ‘Identity and Hegemony: The Role of Universality in the Constitution of Political Logics’, in Butler, Laclau and Žižek 2000, pp. 44–89.
Laval, Christian 2009, ‘Réinventer le communisme, instituer les communs’, ContreTemps: Revue de critique communiste, 4: 48–53.
Léger, Marc James and David Thomas (eds.) 2017, Zapantera Negra: An Artistic Encounter between Black Panthers and Zapatistas, New York: Common Notions.
Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich 1965a, ‘Address to the Second All-Russia Congress of Communist Organisations of the Peoples of the East, November 22, 1919’, in Collected Works, Volume 30, pp. 151–162, Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich 1965b, ‘Five Years of the Russian Revolution and the Prospects of the World Revolution: Report to the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, November 13, 1922’, in Collected Works, Volume 33, pp. 418–432, Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich 1965c, ‘Kommunismus. Journal of the Communist International for the Countries of South-Eastern Europe (in German), Vienna, No. 1–2 (February 1, 1920) to No. 18 (May 8, 1920)’, in Collected Works, Volume 31, pp. 165–167, Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Lichtner, Maurizio 2010, ‘Translation and Metaphors in Gramsci’, in Ives and Lacorte (eds.) 2010, pp. 187–211.
Löwy, Michael 1992, Introduction to Marxism in Latin America from 1909 to the Present, edited by Michael Löwy, translated by Michael Pearlman, pp. xiii–lxv, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.
Löwy, Michael 1998, ‘Sources and Resources of Zapatism’, Monthly Review, 49, 10: 1–4.
Lukács, Georg 1971, ‘What Is Orthodox Marxism?’, in History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, translated by Rodney Livingston, pp. 1–26, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente 1995a, ‘Carta a Adolfo Gilly’, in EZLN, Documentos y comunicados, Volume 2, pp. 104–109, Mexico City: Era.
Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente 1995b, ‘Entrevista para Brecha (Uruguay)’, Enlace Zapatista, 28 October, available at: <https://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/1995/10/28/subcomandante-marcos-entrevista-para-brecha-uruguay/>.
Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente 1997, ‘Intervención de Marcos en la mesa 1 del encuentro intercontinental’, in EZLN, Documentos y comunicados, Volume 3, pp. 319– 24, Mexico City: Era.
Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente 2001a, ‘Fourth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle (excerpt)’, in Marcos 2001c, pp. 78–81.
Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente 2001b, ‘The Story of the Questions’, in Marcos 2001c, pp. 413–16.
Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente 2001c, Our Word is Our Weapon: Selected Writings, edited by Juana Ponce de León, New York: Seven Stories Press.
Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente 2003, ‘Subcomandante Marcos: Según nuestro calendario, la historia del EZLN, previa al inicio de la guerra, tuvo 7 etapas’, Enlace Zapatista, 10 November, available at: <https://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2003/11/10/subcomandante-marcos-segun-nuestro-calendario-la-historia-del-ezln-previa-al-inicio-de-la-guerra-tuvo-7-etapas/>.
Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente 2007a, ‘All That Remains Is to Choose’, in Marcos 2007d, pp. 93–100.
Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente 2007b, ‘Chiapas, the Thirteenth Stele’, in Marcos 2007d, pp. 199–239.
Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente 2007c, ‘Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, in Marcos 2007d, pp. 260–86.
Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente 2007d, The Speed of Dreams: Selected Writings 2001–2007, edited by Canek Peña-Vargas and Greg Ruggiero, San Francisco, CA: City Lights.
Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente 2018a, ‘Between Light and Shade (May 2014)’, in Marcos 2018c, pp. 211–29.
Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente 2018b, ‘Words for the National and International Caravan for Observation and Solidarity with Zapatista Communities’, in Marcos 2018c, pp. 111–22.
Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente 2018c, The Zapatistas’ Dignified Rage: Final Public Speeches of Subcommander Marcos, edited by Nick Henck, translated by Hengry Gales, Chicago, IL: AK Press.
Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente and Yvon Le Bot 1997, El sueño Zapatista, Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama.
Mariátegui, José Carlos 1971, Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality, translated by Marjory Urquidi, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Mariátegui, José Carlos 2011, ‘Anniversary and Balance Sheet’, in José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology, edited by Harry E. Vanden and Marc Becker, pp. 127–131, New York: Monthly Review Press.
Marx, Karl 1993, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft), translated by Martin Nicolaus, London: Penguin.
Marx, Karl 1989, ‘Letter to Otechestvenniye Zapiski’, in Marx/Engels Collected Works, Volume 24: Marx and Engels 1874–1883, pp. 196–201, New York: International Publishers.
Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels 1975, The Holy Family, in Marx/Engels Collected Works, Volume 4: Marx and Engels 1844–1845, pp. 5–211, New York: International Publishers.
Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels 1976, Manifesto of the Communist Party, in Marx/Engels Collected Works, Volume 6: Marx and Engels 1845–1848, pp. 477–519, New York: International Publishers.
Mbembe, Achille 2017, Critique of Black Reason, translated by Laurent Dubois, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Mezzadra, Sandro 2018, In the Marxian Workshops: Producing Subjects, translated by Yari Lanci, London: Rowman & Littlefield.
Mezzadra, Sandro and Brett Neilson 2013, Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Mignolo, Walter D. 2011, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options, pp. 213–251, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Mignolo, Walter D. 2018, Foreword to Constructing the Pluriverse: The Geopolitics of Knowledge, edited by Bernd Reiter, pp. ix–xv, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Mignolo, Walter D. 2000, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Mignolo, Walter D. and Catherine E. Walsh 2018, On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Nail, Thomas 2012, Returning to Revolution: Deleuze, Guattari and Zapatismo, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Portantiero, Juan Carlos 1981, Los usos de Gramsci, Mexico City: Folios.
Quijano, Aníbal 1991, Prologue to José Carlos Mariátegui, Textos básicos, pp. vii–xvi, Lima: Tierra Firme.
Rabasa, José 2010, Without History: Subaltern Studies, the Zapatista Insurgency, and the Specter of History, Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Radio Zapatista 2020, ‘Mujeres que luchan’, 12 March 2019–19 January 2020, available at: <https://radiozapatista.org/?tag=mujeres-que-luchan&lang=en>.
Ryan, Dermot 2016, ‘Marx’s “Universal Passport”; or, Critique as a Practice of Translation’, boundary 2, 43, 3: 105–129.
Sader, Emir 2011, The New Mole: Paths of the Latin American Left, translated by Iain Bruce, London: Verso.
Said, Edward 1983, The World, the Text, and the Critic, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Said, Edward 1999, ‘Traveling Theory Reconsidered’, in Rethinking Fanon: The Continuing Dialogue, edited by Nigel Gibson, pp. 197–214, Amherst, NY: Humanity Books.
Sánchez Vázquez, Adolfo 1977, The Philosophy of Praxis, translated by Mike Gonzalez, London: The Merlin Press.
Schwarz, Roberto 1992, Misplaced Ideas: Essays on Brazilian Culture, edited by John Gledson, London: Verso.
Sunkara, Bhaskar 2020, The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality, New York: Basic Books.
Taek-Gwang Lee, Alex and Slavoj Žižek (eds.) 2016, The Idea of Communism 3, London: Verso.
Thomas, Peter D. 2010, The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism, Historical Materialism Book Series, Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books.
Thomas, Peter D. 2020a, ‘The Tasks of Translatability’, International Gramsci Journal, 3, 4: 5–30.
Thomas, Peter D. 2020b, ‘After (Post) Hegemony’, Contemporary Political Theory, <https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-020-00409-1>.
Tomba, Massimiliano 2019, Insurgent Universality: An Alternative Legacy of Modernity, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo 2015, ‘Perspectival Anthropology and the Method of Controlled Equivocation’, in The Relative Native: Essays on Indigenous Conceptual Worlds, pp. 55–74, Chicago, IL: HAU.
Webber, Jeffery R. 2012, Red October: Left-Indigenous Struggles in Modern Bolivia, Historical Materialism Book Series, Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books.
Wilder, Gary 2015, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Williams, Gareth 2011, The Mexican Exception: Sovereignty, Police, and Democracy, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Williams, Gareth 2016, ‘The Subalternist Turn in Latin American Postcolonial Studies, or, Thinking in the Wake of What Went Down Yesterday’, Política Común, 10, available at: <https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/pc/12322227.0010.016?view=text;rgn=main>.
Womack Jr., John 1999, Rebellion in Chiapas: An Historical Reader, New York: The New Press.
Zavaleta Mercado, René 2018, Towards a History of the National-Popular in Bolivia, 1879–1980, translated by Anne Freeland, London: Seagull Books.
Zibechi, Raúl 2010, Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti-State Forces, translated by Ramor Ryan, Oakland, CA: AK Press.
Žižek, Slavoj 2000, ‘Class Struggle or Postmodernism? Yes, Please!’, in Butler, Laclau and Žižek 2000, pp. 90–135.
Žižek, Slavoj 2004, ‘Introduction: Between the Two Revolutions’, in V.I. Lenin, Revolution at the Gates: A Selection of Writings from February to October 1917, edited by Slavoj Žižek, pp. 3–12, London: Verso.
Žižek, Slavoj 2007, ‘Mao Tse-Tung, the Marxist Lord of Misrule’, in Mao Tse-Tung, On Practice and Contradiction, pp. 1–28, London: Verso.
Žižek, Slavoj (ed.) 2013, The Idea of Communism 2, London: Verso.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 501 | 203 | 20 |
Full Text Views | 61 | 27 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 164 | 66 | 0 |
This article examines numerous conceptions of translation within the Marxist tradition. It begins with Antonio Gramsci’s theorisation of the concept before turning to the problem of Marxism in Latin America and how the Zapatistas have dealt with this problem. The aim is to shed light on a critical school of Marxist thinking, which requires that Marxism’s universalist claims be translated in response to changing historical conditions so that they may become concrete formulations capable of speaking to and intervening in concrete situations. Yet the Zapatistas go further by maintaining that translation must also occur between the universalist claims of Marxist theory and the competing universalist claims of indigenous Maya cosmology. The article thus underscores what can be gleaned from different modes of translation in terms of Marxism’s future and its capacity to enter into mutually beneficial alliances with distinct worldviews and ongoing social movements.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 501 | 203 | 20 |
Full Text Views | 61 | 27 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 164 | 66 | 0 |