Translation is a culture-forming practice that transmits content into a new language system. In the process, it contributes to shaping the development of literature and knowledge and even has the capacity to balance power relationships. Because translations arise from specific occasions, serve specific purposes, belong to specific contexts, and are understood differently depending on the situation, they are a fundamental instrument of knowledge transfer and play a key role in the normalization of society and the construction of culture. Scholars who study the translation cultures of the Early Modern era must take specific text products as their point of departure but not limit themselves to linguistic and literary analysis. On the contrary, translations provide access to the fictive, imaginary, and extraliterary world of Early Modern times; they testify to the contemporary interpretation of the pre-texts, their modernization, and their incorporation into new contexts.Footnote 1 The second section of this volume focuses primarily on the knowledge that is accessed, reclassified, and expanded during the translation process and that permits conclusions to be drawn about underlying social, discursive, and anthropological concepts.

1 Paths of Knowledge

The most direct approach to this subject is by way of the areas and selection of the knowledge transferred. The objects of knowledge investigated here in section two range from classical epics, religious texts (catechisms and devotional literature), and notarial documents to cartographic and encyclopaedic works. The encyclopaedic dictionaries whose production and characteristics Susanne Greilich investigates (see chap. 16), for example, testify to the general relevance of translation for the production of knowledge in the Early Modern period. A large proportion of the encyclopaedias produced in Spain were based on translations, primarily from the French. By way of this transfer, the country participated in the practices of knowledge accumulation, classification, and systematization in which scholars all over Europe engaged. At the same time, the national bodies of knowledge expanded, as the encyclopaedic definitions of terms were not merely translated into Spanish, but also supplemented, corrected, and revised.

Of relevance for Early Modern translation cultures is not only what was translated, but also and above all how it was translated, a matter that opens up a whole panorama of questions: Who translates, under what conditions, to what end, and for what recipients? In her “Case Study in Early Modern Translation”,Footnote 2 Sofia Derer retraces the paths by which certain knowledge could have made its way to a translator (see chap. 15). For her project, she took the translated passages of an English treatise in Johann Michael Moscherosch’s devotional book Insomnis Cura Parentum as a point of departure. By way of a French text – Le Testament d’vne Mere à son Efant à Naistre, the version published by Theodor Hamer de Worffelt in 1628 –, her search leads her to Elizabeth Jocelin’s The Mother’s Legacy to her Vnborn Childe, which was first published in 1624. Even if there is no evidence to prove that Moscherosch translated the French Testament into German himself, it was unquestionably an important pre-text that presumably made its way to him by way of his contacts to book dealers. On the basis of his dedicatory foreword, Derer argues that Moscherosch’s reception of the pre-text and the production of his own work, Insomnis Cura Parentum, were influenced by the conception of piety propagated by the reform theologian Johann Schmidt of Strasbourg. The synopsis supplementing her study enables the direct comparison of the German translation, the French source text, and the English pre-text. Already the French version undertook a new adaptation to known knowledge systems, enhanced in part with additional perspectives; references to the Bible and other religious texts were added, omitted, or expanded.

It is possible to translate not only languages but also semiotic signs. Taking the 1551 atlas by ‘Alī b. Aḥmad al-Sharafī as an example, Víctor de Castro León and Alberto Tiburcio analyze linguistic elements, but also iconographic ones such as knot patterns, flags, and geometric motifs, to show how various transfer processes intermesh (see chap. 13). According to their findings, the atlas is the product of numerous acts of translation combining linguistic, religious, nautical, numerical, and astronomical information as well as architectural, decorative, and calligraphic patterns. Al-Sharafī’s transfer process, the two authors contend, – but also the finished product – are better understood as adaptations of specific cultural practices in the production of cartographic and geographic knowledge. It is no longer possible to reconstruct with certainty how that knowledge found its way from the Southern European centres of map production to a native Arabic speaker in Sfax in the sixteenth century. De Castro León and Tiburcio assume a wide variety of routes and transcultural contacts throughout the Mediterranean region. Refugees from the Iberian Peninsula and converts from Mallorca, Sicily, Italy, and Southern France, as well as merchants, diplomats, and prisoners may all have contributed to spreading the knowledge.

2 Concepts of Knowledge in Translation Studies

The field of translation studies long concentrated solely on the finished translation product before finally turning its attention to translation processes. After all, scholars realized, it is only possible to translate what has been understood, as Radegundis Stolze pointed out in her introduction to translation theories.Footnote 3 The protagonists of the transfers thus came into focus along with their individual and cultural knowledge. Translators must not only have twofold linguistic competence, but also cultural experience and subject-specific knowledge at their disposal.

In Übersetzungswissenschaft – Eine Neuorientierung,Footnote 4 Mia Vannerem and Mary Snell-Hornby enlisted Charles Fillmore’s “scenes and frames” semantics to develop a nuanced explanatory model for how linguistic knowledge, conceptual notions, and thought patterns affect the translation process. The term “scene” denotes the image that comes to mind when we hear a certain verbal expression (the “frame”). Scenes and frames are two interdependent forms of knowledge organization: scenes evoke frames and vice versa. In every process of understanding and communication, we access a linguistic situation by way of our own experience. Our conceptions of the world are variable and complex, but at the same time closely associated with our own respective socioculture. Translators thus often face the difficulty of not readily being able to decode and recode linguistic frames. Rather, with the aid of their knowledge of the world, they must seek to understand the scenes behind the frames and translate the meaning they arrive at into a different cultural context. The act of processing the information received in the frames gives rise to a large number of small, dynamically interrelated scenes that merge to form the general “scene behind the text”Footnote 5 in the mind’s eye of the recipient. Vannerem and Snell-Hornby consider translation a creative process because it interlinks various linguistic notions, knowledge elements, and conceptions of the world.

Wolfram Wilss – one of the first German translation studies scholars to have developed an interest in the relationship between “cognition and translation” – opts for a different model for how translators access knowledge. He characterizes translation as a mentally determined creative process for which certain cognitive conditions must be met. Translators must activate their declarative and procedural knowledge. They must have knowledge potentials at their disposal, be capable of accessing them, and possess the ability to select the relevant knowledge from the bulk of available information. Wilss’s deliberations are aimed at shedding light on the “black box” of mental translation processes, even if he concedes the difficulty of arriving at a rational understanding of creativity and intuition.Footnote 6

Citing more recent psycholinguistic studies, other translation studies scholars argue that, in the process of understanding, information is not merely added to a person’s knowledge, but assigned to the various areas of that knowledge: “Every time a person receives new information, the cards of knowledge are reshuffled, and the person decides which cards he wants to continue the game with, and which he will put aside”, Frank G. Königs explains in his contribution Text und Übersetzer: Wer macht was mit wem?Footnote 7 Not unlike Wilss, Königs considers it an important task of translation studies to figure out the rules by which translators reshuffle their mental cards. Erich Prunč, on the other hand, proposes a theoretical model according to which the act of mental processing takes place in two workspaces, a controlled one and an uncontrolled one, which overlap in part. He assigns the “translator’s knowledge of rules, world, and facts” – that is, their entire knowledge of the specific text type as well as of the translation norms and literary formats of the target culture – to the controlled workspace, and their intuition and creativity to the uncontrolled workspace.Footnote 8 Like other translation scholars, Prunč points out that mental processes cannot be isolated from the social reality of communication. On the basis of similar deliberations, Hanna Risku has developed the concept of the “situation-embedded” translation in which the brain loses its autarchy and is replaced by a complex interplay between the translating subject, the texts produced, and social interrelationships.Footnote 9 Through the interaction between the participating communication partners, a variegated network forms in which both individual and collective knowledge is retrieved, changed, generated, and expanded.

3 The Translators’ Knowledge

It is already difficult to know what goes on in the minds of present-day translators when they activate and process knowledge. All the more inaccessible to scholars in the field of historical translation are the mental processes of translators of the past. At the same time, however, the translation products and their paratexts allow us to draw conclusions about the previous knowledge Early Modern translators had to draw on when they worked with new knowledge, processed information, and linked it to their existing knowledge.

The linguistic and previous knowledge of the persons involved played a decisive role, for example, in the translation of the French Encyclopédie méthodique into Spanish. The experts hired to translate the articles for the Encyclopedia metodica were to bring not only linguistic but also relevant specialist knowledge with them to the job. Particularly in the area of the crafts, close collaboration between translators and craftspersons was considered indispensable, as Susanne Greilich explains on the basis of her historical sources (see chap. 16). The editor of a specialist Spanish dictionary is even known to have considered the translation of lifeworld practices and objects a greater challenge than that of scientific theories and concepts. After all, the related vocabulary was so specific that only very few people were familiar with it.

The indigenous notaries (escribanos) in the service of the colonial administration in New Spain, for their part, were not only required to be alphabetized, but also to possess knowledge specific to the office. This is a phenomenon to which Martina Schrader-Kniffki, Yannic Klamp, and Malte Kneifel draw attention in their study of translation concepts and strategies in the evangelization texts and documents of indigenous judicature in the Sierra Norte of the state of Oaxaca in Mexico on the periphery of the Spanish colonial empire (see chap. 14). The contribution contains excerpts from the Doctrina Cristiana by Francisco Pacheco de Silva as well as three wills originally written in Zapotec, complete with their translations into Spanish. For the notarial texts, the translators’ schematic knowledge was especially decisive. Schrader-Kniffki, Klamp, and Kneifel reveal that the Zapotec wills and their Spanish translations generally adhered to the structures prescribed in manuals. The notaries merely had to copy out text templates and fill them in with case-specific information. It can be concluded from these observations that intertextual and transtextual references were more important for the translation of notarial texts than the linguistic conventions of the target culture.

The incongruencies between linguistic systems and systems of knowledge – or, to quote Vannerem and Snell-Hornby, between “frames” and “scenes” – posed a major challenge to translators of the Early Modern period. The Spanish encyclopaedists considered many of the expressions in French dictionaries untranslatable because there were no corresponding specialist terms in Castilian.Footnote 10 In some cases, entire articles had to be rewritten for Spanish dictionaries because there were no French counterparts to typical regional products and craftspersons, for example espadrille shoemakers. Yet it was not only the lexis that caused problems, but also the semantics and underlying concepts and discourses, a circumstance to which the SPP 2130 research projects on the translation cultures of extra-European missionary activities bear striking witness.Footnote 11 As the indigenous languages of the Spanish colonial empire, among them Zapotec, were unacquainted with Christian theological concepts, the notion of the Trinity caused the translators of the Doctrina Cristiana considerable problems. Conversely, Christian-socialized translators had difficulties with texts formulating a polytheistic view of the world, as is evidenced by the first German translation of Homer’s Odyssey (1537/38). Simon Schaidenreisser repeatedly equates Jupiter/Zeus – who, as the highest-ranking representative of the pantheon, is the only one authorized to enable the hero’s return – with the almighty God of Christianity. At the same time, as Jennifer Hagedorn shows in her contribution “The Hero and the Strong Women”, he weakened the divinity of other figures, for example through allegorization (see chap. 12).

Already contemporaries were aware that that not all expressions could be translated from one language into another – either from Spanish into Zapotec or vice versa. Several pre-texts were deliberately supplemented with additional knowledge to facilitate the recipients’ understanding. In one metatranslational commentary, a translator explains that, in his translation of the catechism into Zapotec, he has furnished it with useful and necessary additions intended to aid the instruction in the Christian faith. Early Modern translators generally did not regard the addition of explanations as a contradiction to the notion of loyalty to the source text.

4 Manipulative Tendencies and Matters of Power

There are several reasons why two translations of the same text can never be identical. For one thing, translators’ knowledge differs; for another, the meaning of texts, especially literary ones, can never be fully understood. What is more, understanding itself is always subjective.Footnote 12 In her introduction to functional translation, Christiane Nord puts this fundamental insight on the nature of translation in a nutshell when she points out that “to translate is always also to process”.Footnote 13 A certain degree of intervention is unavoidable to the extent that translators strive to do justice to the intentions of the sender, the expectations of the recipient, and the specific communication situation. Knowledge is not only selected, processed, and structured, but also expanded and condensed, deliberately withheld, and even falsified.

This conception no longer has anything to do with the notion of equivalence that long dominated linguistically oriented translation scholarship.Footnote 14 On the contrary, here differences are considered a fundamental attribute of translation work. It was the “descriptive translation studies” that brought about this turning point in the study of translation. The exponents of this approach proceeded in a target-text-oriented fashion, enquired after cultural contexts, identified historical patterns of thought and speech, and exposed hidden norms.Footnote 15 Theo Hermans provocatively declared manipulative changes the essential principle of all translation: “From the point of view of the target literature, all translation implies a degree of manipulation of the source text for a certain purpose.”Footnote 16 For the collective volume in which he propounded this outlook in 1985, Hermans chose the programmatic title The Manipulation of Literature.

Because they are in a position to change and manipulate content, translators possess certain power – a circumstance of which the Early Modern period was already aware. The colonial administration in New Spain, for example, sought to prevent translators from acting in their own interest or to the benefit of their allies. Persons who wanted to translate for that authority were required to take an oath in which they pledged to execute their office well and reliably, neither to conceal anything nor by any means to adopt party for any side (see the contribution by Schrader-Kniffki, Klamp, and Kneifel, chap. 14).

Irrespective of such safety precautions and despite the professions of loyalty frequently found in paratexts and statements by translators throughout the history of literature, translations always involve changes. They have always been, and still are, used to promote certain points of view. Translators usually take established moral concepts as their orientation and adapt their translations to the majority society or those wielding the political power, even if these norms often remain implicit. Changes of emphasis between the source and target text often contribute to stabilizing systems of rule and passing on ideologies, as stressed primarily by the exponents of the “manipulation school” founded by Hermans. In the collective volume Translation/History/Culture, Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere define translation as a power-oriented act of rewriting: “Translation is, of course, a rewriting of an original text. All rewritings, whatever their intention, reflect a certain ideology and a poetics and as such manipulate literature to function in a given society in a given way. Rewriting is manipulation, undertaken in the service of power.”Footnote 17 In their book The Translator as Communicator, Ian Mason and Basil Hattim likewise subscribe to the idea that translations are always bound to discursive relationships of power and dependency, and even take that notion a step further by declaring translation an ideological act.Footnote 18

5 Religious and Origin-Related Normalizations

None of the contributors to the second section of this volume goes so far as to accuse translators of the Early Modern period of ideological action. Repeatedly, however, they point out the problematic nature of the fact that cultural translations are shaped by social, religious, and origin-related norms, and that shifts of emphasis come about to the advantage of hegemonial powers.Footnote 19 The catechistic and notarial texts translated into Zapotec or Spanish, for example, are inextricably linked to the normative standards of both the Christian Church and the Spanish crown. The success of their normalization measures can be retraced in detail on the linguistic-diachronic level. Martina Schrader-Kniffki, Yannic Klamp, and Malte Kneifel ascertain that, in later documents, the Zapotec phrasing comes much closer to the language of the Spanish discourse and the Christian conception of the Trinity than in the early translations (see chap. 14). Adaptation to the guiding principles of the target culture can come about by way of textual but also iconographic elements. ‘Alī b. Aḥmad al-Sharafī drew on traditional Muslim book art and activated the cultural knowledge of the recipients to ensure that they would identify with the atlas of 1551. As Víctor de Castro León and Alberto Tiburcio explain, already the calligraphy on the title page lends the atlas – complete with all the geographic and cartographic knowledge it contains – the guise of a genuine Muslim object (see chap. 13). By integrating a large number of elements familiar to the recipients, the author transformed the Christian source work into a product of Muslim knowledge culture.

Translations are frequently used to highlight the translator’s own language, literature, and culture, as demonstrated by the first German version of the Odyssey of 1537/38, the subject of Jennifer Hagedorn’s investigation (see chap. 12). The translator Simon Schaidenreisser expressly declared that the aims of his translation were to enrich the German nation, compete with other educated nations, and one day to surpass them. This origin-related motivation is reflected not only in the introductory interpretation of the Homeric epic and the informative marginalia, but also on the level of the storyline. Schaidenreisser represents patriotism as his hero’s key motive for action, leading the German Odysseus to yearn incessantly for his return to his beloved homeland – even during his stay with the alluring enchantress Circe.

The authors of the Spanish encyclopaedia translations verifiably pursued a comparable objective. Scholars who withdrew from the collective translation undertaking to write works of their own were looked down upon and accused of personal vanity and a lack of patriotism. As Susanne Greilich shows for the Spanish encyclopaedia translations, the geographical articles offer excellent insights into how hierarchies were established with regard to origin and nation (see chap. 16). For example, the encyclopaedias in the different languages arrive at entirely different assessments of Spain. Whereas according to a French geographical dictionary it is a backward and lethargic country, the Spanish counterpart cites the discovery of the New World and emphasizes the Iberian strengths. As they worked, the translators cleverly interwove the French encyclopaedia articles with knowledge from Spanish works, making sure to underscore its scientific relevance in the process. Greilich exposes the ideologies and national norms implicitly informing the translated literature. According to her argumentation, they are manifestations of the struggle for imperial primacy and the defence of colonial claims to power; in fact, the encyclopaedia translations constituted a potent instrument of Spain’s self-assertion.

Yet even if translations are generally subject to discursive dependencies, adhere to the overriding concerns of the target culture, and reinforce prioritization and marginalization tendencies, they can also have the effect of questioning and contradicting commonly accepted norms. Normalization efforts rarely prove entirely successful. In any attempt to translate the notion of the Trinity into Zapotec, for instance, it is virtually impossible to avoid ambiguities and possible confusion with the polytheistic indigenous religion of the target group. And despite its Muslim façade, al-Sharafī’s atlas also testifies to a transcultural exchange of knowledge. Víctor de Castro León and Alberto Tiburcio make a point of explaining that their research results are at odds with those studies that – often carried out in the context of Western cultural imperialism – seek to divide the Mediterranean region into clear-cut religious and geographical blocs (see chap. 13). And even the Spanish encyclopaedia translations allow for different readings: as is documented by the Europe-wide reception and production of encyclopaedic dictionaries, their utilization for national purposes would not have been possible without the integration of transcultural and transgeneric knowledge.

6 Gender-Specific Normalization

The differing emphases in source and target texts bear witness to how norms were adapted, transformed, and established. Adaptation to prevailing systems and opinion-forming discourses are discernible in Early Modern translation cultures not only with regard to origin, nation, and religion, but also vis-à-vis conceptions of gender.Footnote 20 Drawing on recent approaches to gender and intersectionality research, some of the studies in section two of the SPP 2130 have enquired into how gender-specific knowledge is configured and role assignments are made during the translation process.

The application of the socio-scientific intersectionality theory to analyses of translations is still for the most part uncharted territory in the field of translation scholarship. In the article on “Intersectionality” in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, Hilary Brown pointed out as recently as 2020 that there is still a substantial need for research in this area.Footnote 21 Representatives of feminist translation studies have expressed reservations, even scepticism about this approach; what is decisive for intersectional analyses of texts of past eras, however, is the historicization of modern identity categories such as gender, race, and class. Intersectionality appears to be a suitable modus operandi primarily because it enquires into the formation of power structures and identity constructs and sharpens the eye for privileging and marginalizing tendencies.

Precisely the intertwinement of different categories of inequality proves interesting, as Jennifer Hagedorn shows in her investigation of the first German translation of the Odyssey with regard to the categories of divinity and gender (see chap. 12). Intersectionality facilitates a far more nuanced approach than would ever be possible from the perspective of Christianization so common in research on the reception of classical texts in the Early Modern period. Hagedorn establishes that, in the episodes with the goddesses Circe and Calypso, the Early Modern High German version distinctly elevates Odysseus with regard to his sex and his status. In these passages the hero is idealized as an exemplary ruler; his divine partners, on the other hand, but also his male travel companions are systematically downgraded. Calypso is compelled to share her ambrosia with him, Circe is transformed from a divine herbalist into a demonic sorceress, and the members of the hero’s retinue are marginalized as seducible, spineless servants. Schaidenreisser’s Odyssea is thus an excellent demonstration of how a translation can be used to reinforce gender differences and develop hierarchies, both between men and women and between high and low-ranking men. And when the gender category comes into play, even the power relationship between gods and humans can be reversed.

Another example of a translation serving the purpose of gender-specific normalization is Moscherosch’s Insomnis Cura Parentum, the subject of Sofia Derer’s contribution (see chap. 15). The German translator delineates the gender roles far more distinctly than the author of the pre-text, Elizabeth Jocelin. In The Mother’s Legacy to her Vnborn Childe, Jocelin writes to her unborn child because she is afraid she will not survive its birth. She nevertheless hopes, with her text, to fulfil her duty to instruct it in matters of faith. By his own account, Moscherosch feels challenged by Jocelin’s sense of responsibility. As a man, he sets out to surpass the expectant mother’s endeavour with his religious teachings and to provide for his children’s salvation out of a feeling of paternal love. He also departs from the English treatise in that he differentiates between the sexes when addressing his children.Footnote 22 Whereas Jocelin did not even know whether she would give birth to a boy or a girl when she wrote her text, Moscherosch – while recommending the daily reading of the Bible to all of his children – advises primarily his daughters to study prayer and devotional books.

7 Translational Anthropology

Translators are neither bodiless nor historiless beings.Footnote 23 Anyone who translates inscribes themself, their subjective understanding, but also the norms and guiding principles of their time, society, and culture into the text they produce. Translation discourses of the Early Modern period reflect contemporary conceptions of the differing values assigned to men and women, believers and disbelievers, rulers and subjects, scholars and the illiterate, the healthy and the sick. Translations thus prove to be key texts for understanding the general sociocultural conditions of an era. They mirror social structures, adhere to prevailing epistemes, and contribute to the constitution of identity and the moulding of social hierarchies. In the transfer process, conceptions of the world and humanity were often explicitly, but always implicitly, contemplated, structured (usually in binary terms), and codified for decades to come.Footnote 24 Within this context, the various categories of identity – religion, origin, nation, and gender – are not to be considered separately but intersectionally linked. The transfer products moreover shed light on how certain ideals were constituted, dispositifs formed, and discourses conducted. From the translator’s handling of the foreign-language source text and the manner in which it was transformed and functionalized in the target culture, general conclusions can be drawn about an epoch as a whole. When we analyze the pragmatic, situational, and contextual aspects of translations, the contours of a translation anthropology begin to take shape.

The term here introduced requires explanation. Translational anthropology does not refer to the timelessly valid conceptions and practices of mankind. To be sure, translation has been carried out continuously from the very beginnings of the writing and image cultures of ancient Egypt, the Incas, and Judaeo-Greek antiquity to the present – an observation from which it can be concluded that translation is an archetypal form of human action. The aim of “translation anthropology”, however, is not to describe a typical, widespread, and epoch-spanning human activity. The concern, rather, is with defining the specific attributes of the translation cultures of a certain epoch. In our case, it can help us to illuminate the specific historical characteristics, diversity, and variability of the anthropological models that take shape in translations of the Early Modern period. Translation anthropology is thus based on the same conception formulated by Richard van Dülmen for historical anthropology:

It “places the specific human being, with their actions and thoughts, feelings and afflictions, at the heart of the historical analysis. Its concept thus differs fundamentally from philosophical anthropology’s construction of the human being in that it does not enquire into the essence, the general nature of humanity in history, but into the multifaceted cultural-social conditionalities over the course of time, into the specific nature and idiosyncrasy of human action that preclude a self-contained and uniform conception of the human being.”Footnote 25

The theory of historical anthropology developed in the early 1990s rapidly proved to be highly compatible with literary and cultural studies. The Germanist Claudia Benthien, for example, points out that literature not only exhibits thematic proximity to anthropology, but is itself a unique form of anthropological knowledge. It is capable of conveying dimensions of experience and reality that may be articulable only in poetic, narrative, and fictive forms of expression. Benthien sees one of the chief strengths of the field of literary studies in the circumstance that literary texts serve not only as source material for historical-anthropological questions, but also, in view of their formal configuration and rhetorical devices and semantics, as manifestations of further dimensions of human thought and action.Footnote 26 Research on translation possesses this potential all the more. Comparative analyses of source and target products reveal linguistic, iconographic, and semiotic shifts of emphasis from which conclusions can be drawn about individual and cultural changes in systems of literature, knowledge, and governance. The translation-cultural construction of the categories gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, class, religion, health, origin, education, and ownership can thus be investigated, and an archaeology of anthropological knowledge pursued. Already Hayden White seems to have proposed a translation anthropology of such design, at least in seminal form, when he envisaged transdisciplinary translation research as an approach capable of providing fundamental insights into the social practices and historical values of human beings:

What is being recommended is a project of translation, understood as a transcodation among the various processes of self-construction […] by which humanity makes itself in a constant revision of its own ‘nature’ as self and other, society and antisociety, value and nonvalue, subject and object, creative and destructive, all at once and ever anew. This is, I submit, a much more ‘historical’ conception of human nature, society, and culture than anything that any version of ‘history’ has hitherto imagined.Footnote 27