the labour of translation
Importantly, then, the task that cultural difference sets for us is the articulation of universality through a difficult labor of translation. That labor seeks to transform the very terms which are made to stand for one another, and the movement of that unanticipated transformation establishes the universal as that which is yet to be achieved and which, in order to resist domestication, may never be fully or finally achievable.
Importantly, then, the task that cultural difference sets for us is the articulation of universality through a difficult labor of translation. That labor seeks to transform the very terms which are made to stand for one another, and the movement of that unanticipated transformation establishes the universal as that which is yet to be achieved and which, in order to resist domestication, may never be fully or finally achievable.
(Butler, 'Kantians in every Culture', 20)