María Laura Spoturno
Associate Professor
Literary Translation and US Literature
Universidad Nacional de La Plata

Abstract

In this presentation, I explore the role of translation in making the work and ideas of Latin American women human rights activists visible to wider audiences. I focus on the production of women writers, poets and activists exiled in the US and elsewhere as a consequence of the last dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983). Assuming an intersectional perspective, I specifically examine Alicia Partnoy’s work as an activist, translator and editor of You Can’t Drown the Fire: Latin American Women Writing in Exile. Published in 1988 in San Francisco by Cleis Press, at the time a feminist and gay publishing house, You Can’t Drown the Fire is an anthology of translated essays, testimonies, memoirs, letters and poems by women who, as much as Partnoy, have lived through the experience of political repression and exile. This anthology of translated women voices stands out not only as a powerful instrument in the pursuit of liberty and human rights struggles but also as a literary manifesto. The urgency to translate and the need for translators are explicitly acknowledged in the call for works, or rather a call for action, which circulated widely in English and Spanish amidst Latin American authors, artists and activists as much as among critics and intellectuals interested in the Latin American political scenario and booming literary landscape. By exploring the network of solidarity woven by women such as Alicia Partnoy through translation, this presentation aims at contributing to the overall theme of this symposium.

Bio

María Laura Spoturno is Associate Professor of Literary Translation and US Literature at Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad Nacional de La Plata and a Researcher with the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas in Argentina. She is the principal investigator of the research project “Translation, subjectivity and gender. Ethical and Social Responsibility in translation and interpreting practices.” Her latest edited monograph is Subjetividad, discurso y traducción: la construcción del ethos en la escritura y la traducción (Ediciones Universidad de Valladolid, forthcoming). She has also co-edited two special issues of Mutatis Mutandis on transnational feminist translation studies and self-translation in Latin America for Mutatis Mutandis. Her most recent articles focus on the study of subjectivity and (self) (re) translation practices, the relation between translation, gender and feminisms, self-translation and exile. María Laura is the recipient of several research grants including fellowships by the International Council of Canadian Studies, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Fulbright Commission.