Uma vasta ferida em forma de nação: tradução, trauma e testemunho da violência de estado nas vozes dissidentes em Cantoras, de Caro de Robertis

Abstract

In this article, we propose a discussion of the novel Cantoras, by Caro de Robertis (2019a), and its translation into Portuguese, developed by Natália Borges Polesso, in order to investigate the testimonial content present in the fictional narrative and its transformations through translational rewriting. The background to the novel, written and published in English, is the traumatic reality of repression under the military dictatorship in Uruguay, especially regarding violence against women whose sexualities diverged from heteronormativity. We argue that Cantoras and its translation into Portuguese can be presented as trauma narratives and  spaces of resistance against oblivion, in the face of heteronormative state violence. Our discussion is grounded on the notions of testimony and testimonial content, in their tense relationship with fiction, as addressed by Derrida (2015), Penna (2019), Seligmann-Silva (2003b), Ginzburg (2001) and Sarmento-Pantoja (2021). We intertwined such notions with the concept of translation as a rewriting that transforms the “original”, by giving it survival (Derrida, 2001). In the comparative reading of the novel and its rewriting in Portuguese, it was possible to observe the testimonial content woven into the fictional narrative and how it survives transformed in translation, bearing witness, in the narrative in another language, to the trauma of repression against lesbian women.