Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies - Journal articles

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    Into the Woods: Translation and the transnational transmission of trauma on minority language stages
    (The Anglo-Catalan Society, 2022-02-25) Buffery, Helena
    This article approaches contemporary Catalan theatre as a translation zone, in which subjective limits are negotiated and identities (dis)articulated in the process. Focusing on works directed by Calixto Bieito and Oriol Broggi, who, despite their many differences, are known for engaging with interlingual and intercultural translation in the creative process, often beckoning overt reflection on the relationship between languages, environment and identity, the article excavates what three particular plays, Forests (2012), Incendis (2012) and Boscos (2017), all based on translations from more hegemonic languages, reveal about the place of minority languages on the global stage and about looking at the world from a minority-language perspective. In so doing, the article seeks to go beyond the more optimistic and celebratory readings of previous work on Catalonia-in-translation and to attend to the ways in which the asymmetries faced by minority languages in multilingual settings result in, or are experienced as loss, violence and/or trauma. Via diverse processes of translation, languages such as Catalan provide sensitive lenses for the transmission of narratives of transnational trauma, as a direct result of the daily negotiations of place, relatedness and resilience that they demand for survival. The title of the article, “Into the woods,” is intended to be read both literally and figuratively, in recognition of the increasing attention to eco-critical and environmental concerns in contemporary Catalan theatre and of the ways in which renewed attention to ecological survival often goes hand in hand with a commitment to language ecology. On a more figurative level, the article follows the cues provided by the metaphorical wordplay about woods and trees in the reception of Bieito’s Forests and Broggi’s Boscos in order to address the question of what the fact of different languages enables and prevents us from seeing—and what we can learn from making the effort to look at the world multilingually from the perspective of a minority language speaker.
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    Bodies of evidence, resistance and protest: Embodying the Spanish Civil War on the contemporary Spanish stage
    (Liverpool University Press, 2017) Buffery, Helena
    This article explores ways in which the Spanish Civil War has been represented and performed on contemporary Spanish stages, focusing analysis on three productions: Àlex Rigola's 2015 adaptation of Incerta glòria by Joan Sales; Joan Ollé's 2014 adaptation of Mercè Rodoreda La plaza del Diamante; and Carme Portaceli's 2015 adaptation of Carmen Domingo's Només són dones/Solo son mujeres. I use one of the most emblematic plays to construct and explore a space for memory of the Spanish Civil War, José Sanchis Sinisterra's ¡Ay, Carmela! (1987), to investigate a shift in emphasis from the urge to create a space for memory to concern with how the often traumatic memories of the war and its aftermath are inscribed corporeally. I argue that in the context of contemporary discursive practice about the Spanish Civil War, the direction theatrical explorations are taking presents an opportunity for innovative reflection on the way we look at bodies in relation to events of collective violence and trauma, centring not only on the search for the bodies of the dead but also on ways in which living bodies continue to be marked by and transmit the impact of these events into the future.
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    Insurgent bodies in cultural responses to reproductive justice in Chile and Ireland
    (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2022-10-12) Broderick, Céire
    Transnational solidarity and comprehensive critiques of colonial legacies and patriarchal systems united the cultural responses created during the campaigns for reproductive justice in Ireland and Chile in 2018. This article considers the performance piece ‘Abortistas’ by the Yeguada Latinoamericana in Chile and the poem ‘Granuaile’ by Róisín Kelly in Ireland. Taking a decolonial feminist approach, this comparative study explores the interstices of art form and geopolitically distinct territories to examine how the creative practitioners' discursive construction of insurgent bodies aids critique of the lived experiences of women and pregnant people under the restrictive reproductive laws of both countries.