Translation, Exile and Human Rights

This book explores translational activism as intertwined with the experience of exile and human rights advocacy, shining light on the Argentinian poet and activist Alicia Partnoy and her use of translation toward social justice.

Spoturno builds on the notion of translation as foundational to transformative social movements by focusing on how collaborative (self-) translation practices are resituated in their journey across feminist and human rights activist networks in periods of oppression, examining the configuration of individual and collective ethos through such practices, while also foregrounding the gendered dimensions of state terror, exile and resistance. The book acts as a showcase for the work of Partnoy, exiled to the United States, as the first in a line of Latin American women writers to render her testimonial writings of political persecution into English for a wider audience. The volume examines the efforts of Partnoy and other writers to leverage translation individually and collectively in the pursuit of Memoria, Verdad y Justicia, a movement borne out of the need to address the enduring effects of the last dictatorship in Argentina, while illuminating the politics of feminist solidarity underpinning this form of translational engagement. In doing so, the book highlights the possibilities of translation as resistance and as the basis of networks of solidarity, with implications for progress in translational activism more broadly.

This work will appeal to scholars in translation studies, feminist translation, memory and exile studies and Latin American studies.