Figures of Interpretation

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., This original book takes us on a journey through time by depicting the lives of colourful characters and revealing their shared humanity as interpreters. The authors deftly portray the lives of Arokiam, Evans, Darko, Fatima, Bernardino and Antoine and propel the reader into a captivating, often cruel world strewn with injustices., After Figures of Interpretation, a spilled cup of coffee will never be the same again: it is an everyday reminder that interpretation is always an act of balancing or struggling between unequal powers. The book's great variety of portraits discern the thin line between reinforcing and counteracting the political forces pouring into this violent mess called capitalism.

B.A.S.S. Meier-Lorente-Muth-Duchêne works in academia.