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ABSTRACT
This article explores the interaction between materiality and ideality through the work of a translation software technology routinely used in Sikh diaspora communities. The software Sikhi-to-the-Max weaves together subjectivity, religion and linguistic formations making it indispensable for mediating a communicational ecosystem of diasporic life-worlds by enabling translation of a premodern scriptural language between different generations of Sikhs. Sikhi-to-the-Max juxtaposes premodern and modern language formations, in addition to mediating between sonic/affective experiences of music, scriptural text and commentary. Following Deleuze I argue for a new ‘image’ of translation pertinent to the ‘religious’ diasporic lifeworld, an ‘image’ inspired partly by the univocal model of language and world-making embedded in the operating logic of Sikh scripture (gurbani). By contextualizing the communicational models of Sikhi-to-the-Max within the cultural history of imperial translation, this new ‘image’ of translation pushes us to think harder about how the material and the conceptual interact.
Acknowledgements
Arvind-Pal S. Mandair expresses his gratitude to the following people: to Hephzibah Israel and John Zavos for inviting me to deliver the keynote at University of Edinburgh for the conference on Translation and Religion: Interrogating Concepts, Methods and Practices; to Matthias Frenz and Theo Hermanns for their encouraging comments during the conference; to Hephzibah Israel and the anonymous reviewer for their very helpful comments on the first draft of this paper; and to Nathaniel Gallant who also read an early draft of the essay and provided useful feedback as always.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Arvind-Pal S. Mandair teaches at the University of Michigan. His publications include Religion and the Specter of the West (Columbia University Press, 2009), Sikhism: A Guide for the Perplexed (Bloomsbury, 2013). He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture and Theory. He is completing several monographs: Diasporic Logics: Tranversal Encounters Between Sikh and Deleuzian Thought, and Spiritual Warriors: (Non)Violence in Sikh Tradition, and Sikh Philosophy.
Notes
1 I refer to the long standing tradition of ‘radical empiricism’ in the history of philosophy stretching from the Stoics, through Spinoza, Nietzsche, James, Whitehead and Deleuze (to mention only the most prominent figures), loosely connected by an interest in overcoming the duality of mind/body, nature/spirit etc.
2 I deploy the term ‘image’ in the Deleuzian sense of its application to the nature of thinking. See discussion below.
3 According to its official website http://www.SikhiToTheMax.org this software technology was originally ‘developed by Bhai Tarsem Singh of SHARE charity UK. SikhiToTheMax has become a defacto standard for keertans and gurdwaras around the world to display gurbani on screens for sangat to join into the depth of Gurbani and translations. SikhiToTheMax is now developed by Khalis Foundation as seva to the panth and is working hard to ensure it lives up to its name’.
4 This distinction between virtual and actual is drawn from the work of Gilles Deleuze. Virtual and actual are two different senses of reality or two different ways of relating to the world. Both are real. Yet their opposition, hence the two names, stems from two different modes of time that underpin each respectively. Because the virtual refers to differences in themselves as opposed to identities, it can’t be perceived in linear historical time. The actual however works solely with identities and is therefore connected to the function of the ego which grounds itself in everyday chronological time. To invoke the virtual we therefore need to resort to a non-chronological mode of time – aion which enables differences to be perceived in themselves, as pure becomings, an event that is imperceptible to the ego.
5 See also Talal Asad’s ground breaking essays on translation: (Citation1985, [Citation1986] Citation1993).
6 My interest in the translation technology of Sikhi-to-the-Max does not go as far as interrogating the algorithmic language of the technology itself. This would constitute another level of technology that is beyond the scope of this paper. But it is something I would like to develop in a reworked version of this paper. A good example of algorithmic language can be found in Chander (Citation2017). I thank the anonymous reader for bringer the latter to my attention.
7 For a historical overview of the term see for example, Singh (Citation2013). For a discussion of the philosophical usage of gurmat especially in the modern era see Mandair (Citation2009).
8 A fuller discussion of poetic/musical form’s ability to produce a mode of identity resistive of the molarizing effects of ‘translatology’ exceeds the limitations of this present essay. However this topic has been broached elsewhere. See for example Shackle and Mandair (Citation2005), Singh (Citation1995).
9 The term ‘Translatology’ is prominent in works by Jacques Derrida, for example (Citation2004). ‘Translatology’ is also used and developed, though in a very different sense to Derrida, by Francois Laruelle in writings such as (Citation2006). See also Laruelle’s (Citation2013).
10 For a succinct overview of Punjabi language see the entry on ‘Punjabi’ in Singh (Citation1997). Apart from this entry, there is a diverse literature that addresses the relative fluidity of Punjabi language prior to, and after, colonialism. The majority of writers generally agree that despite being written in different scripts [e.g., Shahmukhi was the script favored by Sufi-Muslim Punjabi writers for composing Sufi poetry and the later Quissa literature; whereas Gurmukhi was the script used by the Sikh Gurus for composing verses comprising Sikh scripture (gurbani) as well as the prose form of the janamsakhi literature, as well as the heroic ballads (vars)] premodern Punjabi language was far more heterogeneous and fluid than it was after the modernizing/nationalizing influence of the reformist movements. Thus by the mid-nineteenth century the majority population in the Punjab province (Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs) spoke a variety of ‘Punjabi dialects without any religious distinctions’ (see Oberoi Citation1994, 348). Not only was the spoken language essentially heterogenous, but even the language of scriptural texts like the Guru Granth Sahib was heterogenous – meaning that neither its linguistic-grammatical system, nor its conceptual framework, conformed to a principle of non-contradictory identity. A more apt term for its linguistic-conceptual system might be differential identity. This is why it was possible for the Sikh Gurus to incorporate the writings of Sufi and Hindu mystics, and in the process managed to present a variety of other viewpoints without negating them, and preserved the oldest form of poetic Punjabi vis-à-vis the poetry of 11th century Sufi poet, Shaikh Farid. The challenge to this fluidity really comes in the colonial period with the imposition of English, the creation of Urdu and Hindi along religious lines, and as a direct consequence of this, the Sikhs’ championing of Punjabi in Gurmukhi as their national language. Before closing this footnote, it is important to note an important caveat. In reaction to the religionization of Punjabi language by the British and colonial elites, a number of scholars in the field of ‘Punjab studies’ have tried to assert the secular nature of Punjabi language and have named this heterogeneity as Punjabiat i.e., ‘Punjabi identity’ or essence. However, the logic of this move is entirely colonial, because all it does is retroactively replace the religious with the secular, by applying the principle of non-contradictory identity in the name of secularism. The root of the problem, as this article argues, is the very concept of identity itself.
11 My use of ‘generalized translation’ follows Jacques Derrida’s development of this term in texts such as ‘Theology of Translation’ (Citation2004, 73).
12 Jacques Derrida, ‘Theology of Translation’ (Citation2004, 64–82).
13 For details see: Dressler and Mandair (Citation2011, 9–16); ‘Hegel’ in Mandair (Citation2017, 57–68).
14 See the entry ‘Postcolonialism’ in Engler and Staussberg (Citation2016).
15 A detailed discussion of this can be found in chapters 3 and 4 of Mandair (Citation2009).
16 See Mandair (Citation2009). A more succinct version of this can be found in (Citation2013, 85–90).
17 The term ‘Framed Sikhism’ was coined by Dr Harjeet Singh Grewal in an earlier version of his dissertation manuscript. From what I understand he is developing the term in his current work.
18 By ‘social identity’ I do not mean individual atomic identities, or persons whose bodily existence corresponds in one-to-one fashion to the separate language formations based on their levels of acquisition, socialization and training. For example, Person A in the sangat who is primarily English speakers because 2nd generation, but has had some exposure to gurbani and modern Punjabi but cannot make sense in this language; Person B is steeped in gurbani but has to make sense in modern Punjabi not English; Person C who understands modern Punjabi but only vaguely makes sense of gurbani and doesn’t make sense in English; Person D who has all three language formations but nevertheless can make sense only in modern Punjabi and English. And so on with Persons E, F, G etc … who embody variations of these … My point is that while many people in the sangat (even a majority might have access to gurbani, no person can publicly express the sense of gurbani. The sense associated with gurbani, its peculiar logic of identity, remains interdicted, unshareable in the public domain i.e., outside of the gurdwara setting. So my central point is this: what I have described is individual atomic identities.
19 The example I am giving might seem hypothetical, but it is based on two actual persons whom I have known for close to three decades. Naturally, I have withheld their names.