cat­egory is of ut­most im­port­ance be­cause I place em­phas­is on the se­greg­at­ive and in­teg­rat­ive cul­tur­al prac­tices, polit­ic­al strategies, and tex­tu­al con­struc­tions that es­tab­lish the in­di­vidu­al body as a rep­res­ent­at­ive/car­ri­er of dif­fer­ence. Rather than jux­ta­pos­ing in op­pos­i­tion “own” and “oth­er,” my con­cern is how know­ledge about dif­fer­ence is be­ing pro­duced un­der dif­fer­ent so­cio-polit­ic­al con­di­tions in dif­fer­ent coun­tries and cul­tures, and for which pur­poses it be­comes mo­bil­ized and in­stru­ment­al­ized. My re­search ma­ter­i­al com­prises Ger­man and Pol­ish belles lettre and oth­er types of text from both cul­tur­al spheres. In my ana­lyses I draw upon ba­sic as­sump­tions, cat­egor­ies, and meth­od­o­lo­gic­al ap­proaches of his­tory and the­ory of sci­ence and dis­course ana­lys­is as well as gender and trans­la­tion stud­ies. Us­ing these tools I ana­lyze power re­la­tions arising from dif­fer­ent branches of dis­course. The oth­er fo­cus point of my re­search is trans­la­tion, not with re­gard to text alone, but also as a me­di­um of know­ledge, and com­mu­nic­a­tion, not as a means of un­der­stand­ing, but as stay­ing with­in and bear­ing dis­agree­ment, ne­go­ti­at­ing con­flicts and cla­ri­fy­ing (mis)un­der­stand­ings.