Between the Universal and the Particular: Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Translation and Decolonialism

Debates about postcolonialism and decolonialism abound: there are debates about the curriculum, about looted cultural artefacts, about language and translation, about capitalism and race, and much more. How can we think about universality and universals in this context where it is no longer possible to take universals as given? Souleymane Bachir Diagne occupies a distinct position in these debates, which he has developed in a number of works over the last decade or so (In Search of Africa[s], From Language to Language: The Hospitality of Translation and Ubuntu). Diagne argues against what he calls ‘centrisms’ and ‘identitarianism’ and for the view that it is not only necessary to affirm a certain universality, but it is a good thing too. He proposes to think of universality as the translation between languages. However, I argue that Diagne takes both the universal and the particulars as given. In the case of the universal, it is a humanism and the language of mathematical logic; in the case of the particulars, it is the individual languages or cultures. I read Diagne critically through the lens of Jacques Derrida’s work on hospitality and Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s theory of hegemony, arguing that we should conceive of the relationship between universal and particular as both in irreducible tension and mutual articulation. This is a more accurate way of describing what actually happens in the context of postcolonialism and decolonialism, and it is a way to avoid taking refuge in universal principles or particular identities.