Translation and the Archive

This essay examines the relation between Translation and the Archive—considered here as related concepts and forms of knowledge, as well as interconnected material practices, technologies, and traditions—within the larger collective examination of transnational knowledge in the present special issue of KNOW. One of the primary objectives of this essay is to showhow the relation and various interconnections between Translation and the Archive appear to be central to the production of what can be conceptualized as transnational knowledge today, from both a historical and a contemporary perspective. As conceptualized in what follows, a critical consideration of Translation and the Archive can provide important insights, both theoretical and practical, regarding the production and preservation of knowledge across languages, the circulation of scholarship across different geopolitical contexts, and the overlap and tensions between creative and scholarly practices, as well as some key conceptions of history- and memory-sustaining translational and archival practices.