Translation, Biopolitics, Colonial Difference, the fourth book in the Traces series, focuses on the problems of translation and the political dynamics surrounding multiplicity - linguistic, regional, transnational, and civilizational - today. The international group of authors deal, both theoretically and empirically, with the historical obstacles and future opportunities offered by an emerging global order that is still struggling with the legacy of the previous four centuries of Eurocentric capitalist development. The authors amply illustrate that the concept of translation is far from being singularly determined, and how extremely difficult it is for philosophy to be distinct from translation. Here translation is regarded as a general concept, by which the Eurocentric framework implicit in the existent academic practices of comparison is problematized and according to which old questions are transformed into new ones and articulated to one another across disciplinary boundaries and regional or national borders. This book shows how the emerging global order might be viewed once we have been liberated from the Eurocentric perspective; it includes sociological inquiries into the system of international security networks and an analysis of the consequences of the transformation of the nation-state; it deals with the foundation of international law and its unalienable connection to modern colonial violence, and the foundational complicity between modern sovereignty and biopolitics. On an empirical note, the essays in this major volume deal with the various practices of translation in multiple locales, the belated constitution of anthropological language, philosophical discussion on translation, and the sexual aspects of translational politics. The relations between economics, ontology, and politics together form the crossroads at which the authors in this volume meet. As such, the volume will be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience of readers in the Humanities concerned with the intersections among politics, economy, philosophy, postcoloniality, and translation studies, and would above all attract interest from the emerging readership in biopolitics (under the field of comparative literature).

More than a century ago, filmmakers made their primary focus innovative and widely promulgated visions of antiquity, creating a profound effect on the critical, popular, and scholarly reception of antiquity. In this volume, scholars from a variety of countries and varying academic disciplines have addressed film s way of using the field of Classical Reception to investigate, contemplate, and develop hypotheses about present-day culture, society, and politics, with a particular emphasis on gender and gender roles, their relationship to one another, and how filmic constructions of masculinity and femininity shape and are shaped by interacting economic, political, and ideological practices.

This book critically analyzes the global hegemony of the United States – a hegemony whose innovative aspect consists in articulating postcoloniality to imperial control – in relation to knowledge and knowledge production. Through targeted case studies on the historical relationship between regional areas and the United States, the authors explore possibilities and obstacles to epistemic decolonization. By highlighting the connection between the control of work and the control of communication that has been at the core of the colonial regimes of accumulation (‘classic colonialism’), they present an entirely new form of disciplinary practice, not based on the equation of evolution and knowledge. An extensive introduction outlines the historical genealogy of Pax Americana epistemic hegemony, while individual chapters examine the implications for different regions of the world and different domains of activity, including visual culture, economy, migration, the arts, and translation. This interdisciplinary collection will appeal to students and scholars in many fields, including Asian studies, American studies, postcolonialism, and political theory.

Ben-Hur was the first literary blockbuster to generate multiple and hugely profitable adaptations, highlighted by the 1959 film that won a record-setting 11 Oscars. General Lew Wallace's book was spun off into dozens of popular publications and media productions, becoming a veritable commercial brand name that earned tens of millions of dollars. Ben-Hur: The Original Blockbuster surveys the Ben-Hur phenomenon's unprecedented range and extraordinary endurance: various editions, spin-off publications, stage productions, movies, comic books, radio plays, and retail products were successfully marketed and sold from the 1880s and throughout the twentieth century. Today Ben-Hur Live is touring Europe and Asia, with a third MGM film in production in Italy. Jon Solomon's new book offers an exciting and detailed study of the Ben-Hur brand, tracking its spectacular journey from Wallace's original novel through to twenty-first century adaptations, and encompassing a wealth of previously unexplored material along the way

Giovanni Boccaccio's Genealogy of the Pagan Gods is an ambitious work of humanistic scholarship whose goal is to plunder ancient and medieval literary sources so as to create a massive synthesis of Greek and Roman mythology. The work also contains a famous defense of the value of studying ancient pagan poetry in a Christian world. The complete work in fifteen books contains a meticulously organized genealogical tree identifying approximately 950 Greco-Roman mythological figures. The scope is enormous: 723 chapters include over a thousand citations from two hundred Greek, Roman, medieval, and Trecento authors. Throughout the Genealogy, Boccaccio deploys an array of allegorical, historical, and philological critiques of the ancient myths and their iconography. Much more than a mere compilation of pagan myths, the Genealogy incorporates hundreds of excerpts from and comments on ancient poetry, illustrative of the new spirit of philological and cultural inquiry emerging in the early Renaissance. It is at once the most ambitious work of literary scholarship of the early Renaissance and a demonstration to contemporaries of the moral and cultural value of studying ancient poetry. This is the first volume of a projected three-volume set of Boccaccio's complete Genealogy.

Genealogy of the Pagan Gods by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) is an ambitious work of humanistic scholarship whose goal is to plunder ancient and medieval literary sources so as to create a massive synthesis of Greek and Roman mythology. The work also contains a famous defense of the value of studying ancient pagan poetry in a Christian world. The complete work in fifteen books contains a meticulously organized genealogical tree identifying approximately 950 Greco-Roman mythological figures. The scope is enormous: 723 chapters include over a thousand citations from 200 Greek, Roman, medieval, and Trecento authors. Throughout the Genealogy, Boccaccio deploys an array of allegorical, historical, and philological critiques of the ancient myths and their iconography. Much more than a mere compilation of pagan myths, the Genealogy incorporates hundreds of excerpts from and comments on ancient poetry, illustrative of the new spirit of philological and cultural inquiry emerging in the early Renaissance. It is at once the most ambitious work of literary scholarship of the early Renaissance and a demonstration to contemporaries of the moral and cultural value of studying ancient poetry.

Ben-Hur was the first literary blockbuster to generate multiple and hugely profitable adaptations, highlighted by the 1959 film that won a record-setting 11 Oscars. General Lew Wallace's book was spun off into dozens of popular publications and media productions, becoming a veritable commercial brand name that earned tens of millions of dollars. Ben-Hur: The Original Blockbuster surveys the Ben-Hur phenomenon's unprecedented range and extraordinary endurance: various editions, spin-off publications, stage productions, movies, comic books, radio plays, and retail products were successfully marketed and sold from the 1880s and throughout the twentieth century. Today Ben-Hur Live is touring Europe and Asia, with a third MGM film in production in Italy. Jon Solomon's new book offers an exciting and detailed study of the Ben-Hur brand, tracking its spectacular journey from Wallace's original novel through to twenty-first century adaptations, and encompassing a wealth of previously unexplored material along the way