Polyglot and polymorphous, Sakae Ōsugi (1885-1923) was a provocative popularizer of Western anarchism, for whom translation was as crucial to his intellectual development as to his visceral existence. Indeed, he frankly admitted that he was only a “translational socialist” whose knowledge of political thought was heavily indebted to foreign books (“Preface to The Philosophy of Labor Movement”). What should be emphasized here, however, is not such overt borrowings or the ways in which he actually lived and embodied them.

By taking his translation work as such as a theoretical practice, this presentation explores discursive configurations of anarchist and non-anarchist thoughts Ōsugi produced. As Benedict Anderson depicts in Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-ColonialImagination, the emergent “vast rhizomal network” of communication allowed a wider and faster global circulation of peoples and ideas, but it also opened up cacophonous yet productive gaps for non-Western readers, as diverse and even mutually antagonistic texts produced in different times and contexts could come to them simultaneously. This presentation reads Ōsugi’s translational activities as an uneasy virtual site of creative negotiations, examining how, for instance, Peter Kropotkin’s Darwinian reflection on mutual aid is juxtaposed with Henri Bergson’s concept of élan vital which Kropotkin harshly criticized. By comparing Ōsugi’s publishing strategies with those of Emma Goldman, this presentation also sheds light on global repercussions of his anarchistic translation projects.