Today, the Cold War is theorized through the organizational structure of the nation state (political knowledge) and area studies (institutional knowledge). Yet, in this framework, the key role of language—in diplomacy, intelligence, interrogation, and more—is often underlooked. Indeed, the Cold War and the ongoing cold war of today as a cultural, diplomatic exchange relies fundamentally on translation. While language has been privileged within area studies, with its focus on literary translation, the perforation of the concept of “language” itself as a tool and weapon during the Cold War deserves greater analysis (Martin-Nielsen 2010, Haddadian-Moghaddam & Scott-Smith 2020). This panel invites papers that think about language as a constructed field, rather than mere tool, of Cold War organization.

We are concerned with the structural triangulation that emerges between the Cold War, language, and area studies. On the one hand, language acquisition serves a practical need; on the other, it essentializes the areas of the world as homogenous blocs, contributing to the formation of Othered nation-states—the so-called “Second” and “Third” Worlds. As Naoki Sakai notes in Translation and Subjectivity (1997), the process of translation itself presents languages as closed entities—and, by association, reifies differences between ethnicities/nations.

Linguistic and geonational differentiation thus occurred in tandem with Cold War attempts at equivalency and exchange. Thus, the complicity between war and translation has not prevented multilingualism from being regularly portrayed as a mechanism for international justice and peace. This rhetoric of multilingual internationalism continues in the post-Cold War rhetoric of globalization. The instrumentalization of multilingualism not only functioned as a tool of international diplomacy but also as a means of cementing the monolingualisms of modern nation-states (Yildiz 2012). In this sense, multilingualism remains within a monolingualism in a kind of ongoing cold war.

This panel explores the dual-faced, ambivalent, and often contradictory nature of multi-/monolingualism emerging from cold war paradigms. We invite papers that consider how languages work as a weapon in/against war, and how war works as a language of worlding in the Cold War and its residues. If you are interested, please submit an abstract through the ACLA portal.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Monolingualism and the Rise of the Cold War Nation-State
  • Modernity, Postcoloniality, and National Languages
• Multilingualism, Area Studies, and the Cold War
• The Cold War Figure of the Translator or Interpreter
  • Technologies of Translation and Interpretation During the Cold War
• Cold War as Ongoing; Impacts on Literature, Language, and Worlding
  • Second World, Third World, and Non-Aligned Literatures
  • Indigenous Languages, Dialects, Accents, and the Cold War
• Temporality, Borders, and Language after 1945
• Languages Beyond the Anthropocene and Cold War