To relaunch inIVA’s popular Annotations series the sixth volume, entitled Modernity and Difference, reproduces a conversation between Stuart Hall and Sarat Maharaj on modernity, difference and translatability. In this extraordinary discussion, two of today’s most important commentators on race and culture map out a new space for thinking about difference. That space is both translatable and untranslatable and, ultimately, escapes fixity and closure.

Additional insights into these issues are provided by Stuart Hall’s talk on ‘Museums of Modern Art and the End of History’ and a text by Sarat Maharaj addressing the untranslatability of the other. Stuart Hall is Emeritus Professor at the Open University and Sarat Maharaj is Professor of Art History and Theory at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and the first Rudolf Arnheim Professor of Art History at Humboldt University, Berlin.