Figures of Interpretation

Edited by B.A.S.S. Meier-Lorente-Muth-Duchêne

Publication date:

05 February 2021

Publisher

Multilingual Matters

Dimensions:

198x129mm
5x8"

ISBN-13: 9781788929394

This ground-breaking book assembles 31 portraits of people who interpret languages, cultures and situations, and offers graphic interpretations of their collective experience. Their individual stories are part of the larger history of interpreters, interpretation and interpretive readings, and they demonstrate how language intersects with race, class, gender and geopolitical inequalities. The book allows the unexpected to unfold by passing control from the writers to the reader, who will see connections and ruptures unfold between space, time and class while never losing sight of the materiality of living. Together and individually, the portraits tell a powerful story about the structure of contemporary society and the hierarchical distributions of power that permeate our lives.

This book can be read as a collection of historical and contemporary portraits of interpreting subjects. It invites us to understand systems of power and oppression through interpreters’ narratives, practices and experiences of inequality. The book offers not only a political account of language, but also a distinctive mode of writing the social and practicing critique.