Creating New Languages of Resistance : Translation, Public Philosophy and Border Violence

Omid Tofighian has been engaged in collaborative philosophical, artistic and political work with displaced, exiled and incarcerated peoples for 25 years. These interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaborations include co-authoring different genres of writing in English; co-creation and translation into English; and shared intellectual and artistic projects. The most notable example is his translation and collaboration in Behrouz Boochani’s award winning book No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison (2018).

Creating New Languages of Resistance is an intellectual and personal reflection on creative resistance; it addresses critical issues pertaining to epistemic injustice, kyriarchy and border violence. Incorporating scholarship, different literary genres, exclusive interviews, media articles and notes on translation, this rigorous and accessible study examines the ‘shared philosophical activity’ Tofighian participates in with different collaborators. It suggests experimental and collaborative ways for producing and analysing similar texts and cultural productions; creates new spaces and frameworks for thinking about displacement and exile; and raises compelling questions and issues for people interested in researching and working to end border violence, bordering and intersectional discrimination.

Presenting a special rationale and philosophical vision about collaboration and co-creation in extreme situations, this is key reading for students, scholars and general readers interested in critical and cultural border studies, translation studies, public philosophy, literatures of resistance, coloniality and decoloniality, identity and positionality.