Translation as an Epistemological Paradigm for Theatre in the Americas

Abstract

Theatre in the Americas defines itself through translation in relation to other cultures in the world. Translation becomes, therefore, the means by which the theatre and performance of one region of the Americas are articulated to another. Through three case studies of theatrical translation—Argentine playwright Griselda Gambaro’s Bitter Blood in Sarasota, Florida; Mexican playwright Sabina Berman’s Heresy in New York City; and Huasteca playwright Ildefonso Maya’s Ixtlamatinij in Huejutla, Mexico—this essay posits translation as an epistemological approach to theatre in the Americas, an approach that not only explores the contours of human knowledge production, but also suggests that translation enables a way of thinking, being, and acting in the world.

Translation has become both a metaphor for and the means by which transnational cultural understanding can be achieved in the contemporary Americas. As Beatriz Sarlo has posited in her book La máquina cultural (The cultural machine), translation is a component part of the cultural "machine" that has constructed Argentine culture in particular, and Latin American culture in general.¹ Translation, in fact, has marked the construction of Latin American culture at least since the figure of Doña Marina (or La Malinche)—Cortés's translator, concubine, and mother of his child. She is emblematic of the mestizaje that has characterized Latin American culture since the Conquest. Unlike the European colonial project in India or Africa, where the weight of "the white man's burden" largely isolated the European settlers from their colonial subjects, the colonial project in Latin America produced an unusually high degree of physical, cultural, and linguistic mixture. As Tzvetan Todorov² and others have argued, Cortés's rapid conquest of Mexico cannot be attributed to the numerical strength of his forces—the indigenous warriors vastly outnumbered his small band—nor exclusively to his superior firepower—the gunpowder they brought with them was frequently sodden and unusable in the tropical climate. Rather, Cortés's victory was largely the result of his political astuteness in grasping and then exploiting the alliances and animosities he discovered among his enemies. As he moved away from the coast, he adroitly adapted and improvised, playing one indigenous faction off another in his theatre of operations until he had conquered the entire Aztec empire. Such tactics depended upon Cortés's ability to communicate with the indigenous populations, and the presence of translators such as La Malinche was crucial to that communication. As imperial domination of Latin America shifted from European to North American control during the nineteenth century, the kind of hybridization of cultural content that characterized the colonial relationship, beginning with the Conquest, continued to mark that relationship, albeit with new players. For this reason, translation has assumed, and continues to assume, particular relevance in the Americas.

Theatre in the Americas defines itself through translation in relation to other cultures in the world. Translation becomes, therefore, the means by which the theatre and performance of one region of the Americas are articulated to another. Translation has held a central cultural importance in Latin America for many years, with intellectuals such as Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, and Octavio Paz working as translators for large portions of their careers. Their translating experiences had great impact on their individual intellectual practices and became central to their own systems of thought. While many critics have seen Borges's fascination with British and North American literature, Dante and the classics, the Bible, The Arabian Nights, and Homer as an indication of his disassociation from his nation and his region, more recent scholarship holds that such a fascination actually demonstrates a desire to locate a local sense of belonging and place within an increasingly heterogeneous and global society. By translating texts from Western European, North American, and Arabic literatures, Borges did not flee from his own cultural context, but utilized his engagement with those texts as a means of more fully locating himself within his own region. As Daniel Balderston and Marcy Schwartz point out, in their introduction to a collection of essays on translation and Latin American literature...