Melina Balcazar

Title: Resistant Bodies: The Materiality of Body and Meaning in the Translation of Violence 

Abstract:

In this talk, we will investigate the invisibilisation of violence against cross-dressers and transgender people, via an analysis of the translations into French of the novels “Bad Girls” by Camila Sosa Villada (trans. Laura Alcoba) and “Slum Virgin” by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara (trans. Guillaume Contré).

Intentionally placing themselves on the margins of society through their use of the informal, slangy language typical of the environment in which they are set, these novels critique violence, choosing to represent it in its most extreme forms, in order to show violence in a new light and from a new point of view. For the authors, this is a way of understanding violence, of situating it in the public space, and of questioning discourse which tries to minimise, or even erase it. A way, therefore, of doing justice to victims of violence, of taking action – a sort of acting-out, showcasing the political power of littérature.

But what happens when translators choose to soften this violent language, or even eliminate it entirely? Is this an unconscious act of submitting the translated text to what Gayatri Spivak calls “the rule of law”? What can a translator do with these resistant bodies, brought to life by this marginal language, the Spanish of the Argentinian ghettos? What can they do with the overflow of meaning these novels bring to the fore? How does a hegemonic language such as French accept or reject them?

Biography:

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https://cell.colmex.mx/personal-academico/balcazar-melina/semblanza-academica

Lecturer in translation at El Colegio de México, with a PhD in French Literature from Sorbonne Nouvelle University, Melina Balcázar is the author of Travailler pour les morts. Politiques de la mémoire dans l’œuvre de Jean Genet (2010) and Aquí no mueren los muertos. Duelo y fotografía en México (2020). She is a contributor to the cultural supplement Laberinto in the Mexican newspaper Milenio, mainly with interviews about the great literary and intellectual figures of France and the French-speaking world. She also writes for the academic journals En attendant Nadeau and Europe, for which she has mainly been responsible for numbers dedicated to Robert Bolaño and Jean Genet. She has translated works by Pascal Quignard, Claude Simon, Georges Didi-Huberman, Félix Nadar, Pierre Ducrozet, Pierre Klossowski, Olivier Rolin and Yves Pagès into Mexican Spanish.