Description and Content:

For scholars, language is, among other things, a vehicle of communication: it is how we present our findings to the world. But language is never neutral or unideological. We may draw on texts that were written in a different language, a different culture, and/or in a distant and very different time period. There may not be a precise translation for particular terms; or meanings may have changed over time. Many of the archives we draw on for slavery and dependency studies were built on practices of exploitation, violence, colonialization and/or enslavement, while seeking to conceal these practices through the use of euphemisms, or what we would today consider commodifying, dehumanizing, or racialized language. How do we work with such texts without  reproducing  or running the risk of hiding certain practices or ways of thinking from view, or even erasing them as objects of analysis?

Sensitivity to linguistic and cultural matters is important. It is easy to say that as scholars, we should always reflect on our use of language. (And so we should.) But the question of how to be precise without re-inscribing the violations of the past is complex, and there are no easy answers. In this workshop, we will discuss these and related questions and seek to find answers together. We also invite participants to bring textual examples or quotations from their research to be discussed in this workshop.

Required reading:

• Herrad, Imogen. "Language, Power and (In)Visibility. Reflections on Decolonizing Academic English," in Concealing Agents: Intentional Processes of Invisibilization in Modern Asian History, ed. Mònica Ginés-Blasi (in preparation)

Additional suggested readings:

• Arndt, Susan. "Koloniale Gewalt, Rassismus und die deutsche Sprache," and "Über dieses Buch und seine Sprache," in Arndt, Susan and Mario Faust-Scalisi, Rassistisches Erbe Wie wir mit der kolonialen Vergangenheit unserer Sprache umgehen (Berlin: Duden, 2022): 9–14.
• Hartman, Saidiya, "Venus in Two Acts," in Small Axe 12 no. 2 (2008): 1–14.
• Osten, Esther von der, et al., "Zur Übersetzung der Texte," in Welten der Sklaverei, ed. Paulin Ismard et al. (Berlin: Jacoby & Stuart, 2023): 9–11.
• Rademaker, Laura. "Why Historians Need Linguists (and Linguists Need Historians)," in Language, Land & Song: Studies in Honour of Luise Hercus, ed. Peter K. Austin, Harold Koch & Jane Simpson (London: EL Publishing, 2016): 480–93.
• Sarti, Raffaella. "Can Historians Speak? A few Thoughts and Proposals on a Possible Global History of Domestic Service/Work," in Servants’ Pasts, ed. Nitin Sinha, Nitin Varma and Pankaj Jha (New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2019): 345–70.