Translation, Exile, Human Rights and Feminisms 

MARÍA LAURA SPOTURNO

Simposio; Feminism in Translation: (In)Visible Women Going Transnational; 2022

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

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.