Locating cultural studies: The limits of translation in knowledge production

Abstract

This article reflects on translation practices engendered by location, disciplinary constraints, and Western hegemonies in the work of cultural studies scholars from the Global South. Focusing on issues of translation beyond language and text, the article tackles cultural translation practices at the levels of theory and analysis, which scholars engage in to render their research legible within academic contexts that continue to pay lip service to stretching the canons of cultural studies curricula and intellectual agendas. How does the labor of cultural translation – often unremarked and invisible – shape the scope and possibilities of cultural studies research that addresses media and technology in the Global South? The article goes behind the frontstage of visible knowledge production to critically examine the directionality and discursive power of specific mechanisms of cultural translation – bridge concept, analogy, and metaphor – which are grounded in historical and geopolitical conditions that constrain the transformational goals of de-Westernizing cultural studies.