Disturbing Translations: Distance, Memory, and Representation in Contemporary Latin American Literature.

Translation;Postmemory;Literature of the dictatorship and post-dictatorship;image and text;General and Comparative Literature;Latin American and Caribbean Studies;Romance Languages and Literature;Humanities;Comparative Literature

Levinson, Hilary AnnCarroll, Amy Sara ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Translation;    Postmemory;    Literature of the dictatorship and post-dictatorship;    image and text;    General and Comparative Literature;    Latin American and Caribbean Studies;    Romance Languages and Literature;    Humanities;    Comparative Literature;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/113570/hlevinso_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

;;Disturbing Translations: Distance, Memory, and Representation in Contemporary Latin American Literature” examines the legacy of dictatorship and political repression in Latin America, focusing on the significance of literature in the aftermath of trauma. Dictatorship disrupts the existing order and produces distance, particularly spatial distance (often resulting from displacement) and temporal distance (between the ;;before” and ;;after” of dictatorship and its legacy in the present). These distances are formally represented in literature via instances of textual disruption, such as ekphrasis, that echo and reconfigure the ruptures of dictatorship. This dissertation introduces the figure of translation as a broad metaphor for negotiating those distances that emerge in the wake of dictatorship, with particular attention to generational distance from trauma and the complexities of postmemory. Taking Marianne Hirsch’s concept of ;;postmemory” as a point of departure for examining the relationship between past trauma and its legacy in the present, this dissertation seeks to re-think postmemory through the lens of translation. While some elements of past trauma may be translated across space, time, and form, pain and loss are among those elements that resist translation; here, translation acknowledges its own limits, recognizing pain and loss without assimilating them. Chapter one explores the relationship between father and son and the references to photographs and film in Roberto Brodsky’s 2007 Bosque quemado. Here, engagement with visual materials is a form of translation, echoing the work of postmemory and the negotiations involved in constructing personal and national narratives in post-dictatorship Chile. Chapter two addresses Sergio Chejfec’s 1999 Los planetas, arguing that the novel depicts the city (here, Buenos Aires, Argentina) as a site of translation and memory where the past and present are contained in layers through which the continued impact of trauma on the present is negotiated. Chapter three considers the limits of translation in Maria Negroni’s La Anunciacion (2007), using Derrida’s notion of the parergon, or the frame, to explore the novel’s gestures toward trauma and excess. Chapter four explores Daniel Alarcon’s At Night We Walk in Circles (2013), focusing on the novel’s treatment of theater to elucidate the relationship between postmemory, translation, and mourning.