Self-translation, Exile and Des-exile: Alicia Partnoy as a Woman Activist Writer in the US and Argentina

MARÍA LAURA SPOTURNO

Oslo

Congreso; 10 th EST Congress Advancing Translation Studies; 2022

Universidad de Oslo

This contribution focuses on the production of Argentinean writer Alicia Partnoy, exiled in the US during the last dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983). It is a known fact that exile imposes innumerable constraints on the individual who, after suffering prosecution, illegal clandestine detention or torture, must now “start a new life,” in a new place, in a new language, a situation that is not without its own crises and dilemmas. The analysis will particularly look at the construction of authorial identity and positioning with regard to the experience of language and self-translation in Partnoy’s testimonial production over time, published both in the US and in Argentina (Simón 2019; Spoturno 2022). As I will argue, in her initial production, published in collaborative self-translation in the US, authorial subjectivity is strongly built on the premise that language and translation are powerful sites for contention, which are crucial in the collective struggles for human rights. Her early production, which bears the distinct sign of exile, shows that, in spite of all impositions and atrocities, language may still declare that which cannot remain hidden (Monteleone 1995). Initially framed within networks of activist women, Partnoy’s creative and academic work has gradually contributed to establish the keys of a solidarity discourse (Partnoy 1986, 1988, 1997, 2020). A later stage in her production, when her work is finally published in Spanish in Argentina, reveals the emergence of a firm voice that has a say in the much needed collective processes of memory construction. At this stage, the construction of authorial subjectivity is built on practices of writing and self-retranslation which move towards the desexile of Partnoy’s word as a poet and activist (Partnoy 2000, 2006, 2009). This research, still in progress, shows that translation operates as an inherent mechanism that contributes productively to thepolitical and multilingual fabric of Partnoy’s work. At a larger level, her production reveals that translation is instrumental in enabling collective struggles and consolidating feminist transnational initiatives in the pursuit of liberty and justice (Castro and Spoturno 2020).