Tuesday, June 24 • 9:00–10:15 • Keoni Auditorium
Keynote Address: “Disclaimer intraducible: My life / is based / on a real story”
The title poem showcases the tensions between the need of survivors to tell our life stories, and the constraints exercised on our texts by publishers, translators, scholars and human rights professionals. Today, cuando ya no vienen matando, since the killing spree is over—at least in the case of Argentina, I can afford to problematize the process of disseminating our experiences under state terrorism.
I argue against two common assumptions: that intellectuals give voice to those who do not have one, and that truth is the central concern of survivors. Nurtured by scholars and writers, and comforting to the society at large, both premises can des-empower survivors while claiming the opposite effect. I will walk through the mirage set by the title poem to illustrate Gail Wronsky’s assertion that what tends to get lost in translation is not poetry, but politics. In the case of highly politicized texts such as testimonios, the risks are magnified. While sharing with conference participants two strategies that could empower survivors, I wish to start a dialogue. We will hopefully find together other tools to preserve the dignity of the survivor while performing the many translations required by our life stories to circulate globally.
Alicia Partnoy is a survivor from the secret detention camps where about 30,000 Argentineans “disappeared.” She is the author of The Little School. Tales of Disappearance and Survival, and of the bilingual poetry collections Little Low Flying and Revenge of the Apple. Partnoy edited You Can’t Drown the Fire: Latin American Women Writing in Exile, and from 2003 to 2006, she was the co-editor of Chicana/Latina Studies: The journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social. A former Vice-Chair of Amnesty International, Partnoy is an associate professor and former Chair of the Modern Languages and Literatures Department at Loyola Marymount University. Partnoy presides over Proyecto VOS-Voices of Survivors, an organization that brings survivors of state-sponsored violence to lecture at U.S. universities. Her work has been published in many anthologies and journals.
Alicia Partnoy, sobreviviente de los campos secretos de detención donde mas de 30.000 argentinos ‘desaparecieron’ es la autora de La Escuelita: Relatos Testimoniales y de los poemarios Volando bajito y Venganza de la manzana. Partnoy compiló la antología You Can’t Drown the Fire: Latin American Women Writing in Exile. Entre el 2003 y el 2006, fue coeditora de la revista cultural Chicana/Latina Studies: The journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social. Partnoy ejerció como Vice Presidenta de la Junta Directiva de Amnistía Internacional-USA y como jefa del Departamento de Lenguas y Literaturas Modernas de la Universidad Loyola Marymount, donde es profesora. Partnoy es presidenta de Proyecto VOS-Voices of Survivors, una organización que invita a sobrevivientes de violencia generada por el estado a hablar en las universidades de los Estados Unidos. Su trabajo ha sido publicado en numerosas antologías y revistas.
For more on Alicia Partnoy and her current work / Para mayor
información:
https://www.lmu.edu/Page9228.aspx