PLANETARY CONCEPT-WORK

PHILOLOGY, UNTRANSLATABLES, LANGUAGE JUSTICE

Emily Apter

History and Theory 64, no. 4 (2025)
“Philology Now” Theme Issue

Starting with an example of philological method drawn from Leo Spitzer's essay titled “Linguistics and Literary History” (1948), which, for many years, served as a foundational text of the discipline of comparative literature, this article delineates some of the reasons why philology, especially in its most specialized guises, became an outmoded discipline in contemporary pedagogies of the humanities. A case is made, however, for “philology now” in the form of plurilingual concept-work and translation theory. Crucial to forms of philosophizing across Western and non-Western languages and traditions, recognized as an important fulcrum of global language justice movements, and repurposed in the emergent field of ecotranslation (which enlarges the semiosphere beyond human language even as it prioritizes language survival among humans), philology gains renewed traction in the contemporary translational humanities.