Argentine Afterlives: Race, Hemispheric Comparison, and Translation in Benjamin de Garay's Los sertones

Thomas Genova

doi:10.5070/T49857565

Argentine Afterlives: Race, Hemispheric Comparison, and Translation in Benjamin de Garay's Los sertones

Thomas Genova

Spanish

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

This article considers Argentine Benjamin de Garay's 1938 Spanish translation of Brazilian Euclides da Cunha's 1902 Os Sertões as a transnational meditation on racialized processes of nation formation in South America. The translation paradoxically frames the linguistic and historical relationships between Brazil and Argentina in terms of both similarity and difference. While de Garay stresses the parallels between Brazil and Argentina in his translator's prologue, he also includes a glossary of supposedly untranslatable Portuguese terms, suggesting incommensurability between the two national experiences. Tellingly, many of the glossary's terms refer to racial categories. In this way, the de Garay text acts as a reflection on the divergent paths that Argentina and Brazil take in treating racial heterogeneity in their respective national narratives.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	138-162
Number of pages	25
Journal	Transmodernity
Volume	9
Issue number	8
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.5070/T49857565
State	Published - 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Revisora de Textos de Historia y Geografía Americana and financed by the Ministerio de Justicia e

Funding Information:
1 Research for this article was supported by a Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar Award to the Universidade Federal Fluminense in Rio de Janeiro and a fellowship at the IberoAmerican Institute in Berlin. Additional funding was made available by a University of Minnesota Grant-in-Aid, the University of Minnesota Imagine Fund, and the University of Minnesota Faculty Research Enhancement Fund. The author wishes to thank the archivists and librarians at the Academia Brasileira de Letras and the Biblioteca Nacional in Brazil and the staff and fellows at the Iberoamerican Institute in Berlin. 2 For a discussion of the origins of this quote, see Fuentes. For demographic information on the countries mentioned, see Mercado, “Brazil: Afro-Brazilians,” and Spinder. 3 See Candido, Schwarz, Fitz, Foster, Croce, Newcomb, and Reis for comparative studies of Brazilian and Spanish American literatures. 4 On the genealogical relationship between Civilización y barbarie and Os Sertões, see Maul, González Echevarría, Bernucci, and Genova. 5 See Gomes for critical-translation considerations of de Garay and “A Literatura Argentina no Brasil” and Figueira for period assessments of his translation. My comparative regional studies approach is inspired by Ette’s theorization of “transarea” studies and work by Spivak and Tötösy de Zepetnek on the place of area studies in comparative literature. On regional lenses in comparative literary studies of Latin America, see Rama and Pizarro. 6 For a theorization of “paratexts” (prefaces, glossaries, etc.), see Genette. For a discussion of the place of paratexts in translation studies, see Batchelor. 7 For succinct biographical information on de Garay, see Maia 85-86 and Diniz and Rangel 361-363. On de Garay’s activities as an “importer” of Brazilian literature into Argentina, see Sorá 114-20. 8 For a comprehensive history of Argentine translations of Brazilian texts, see Sorá. 9 Candido and Preuss (Transnational), meanwhile, have studied the circulation of Spanish-language texts in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Brazil. 10 References are to the 2003 edition. 11 For a theoretical discussion of equivalence in translation studies, see Toury. 12 Ingenieros’s views were typical of a strong strain of Argentine thinking on race and inter-American issues at the time. Historian Eduardo Elena locates an alternate tradition in the writings of Ingeneiros’s contemporary Manuel Ugarte, whose anti-imperial project identified Argentina’s economic and social development at the time as an example of the capabilities of the “raza latina,” a formation that he understood in terms of white-dominated mestizaje. 13 On the Vargas regime’s cultural interventions, see Candido, Levine, Abreu, and Johnson. 14 For a classic study of the racial exclusions underlying the discourse of mestiçagem, see Skidmore. On Latin American eugenics, see Stepan. For a history of the discourse of “racial democracy,” see Alberto and Hoffnung-Garskof. This last article also insightfully outlines “the limits of the myth-of-racial-democracy thesis” (299), detailing “the struggle of Afrodescendants” across the hemisphere “to accentuate [racial democracy’s] more inclusionary meanings” in the face of the paradigm’s notoriously exclusionary applications (267). 15 On relations between Brazil and the United States during this period, see Levine and Minella. 16 On the 1930s in Argentina, in addition to the sources cited here, see Luna and López. 17 On debates concerning the legacy of nineteenth-century liberalism in Argentina during the first half of the twentieth century, see Nállim. 18 On literary polysystems and translation, see Evan-Zohar. 19 The Biblioteca’s Brazilian counterpart was the Coleção Brasileira de Autores Argentinos, directed by Pedro Calmon and financed by the Brazilian foreign ministry (Diniz and Rangel 361). The collection published nine translations by J. Paulo de Medeyros between 1938 and 1951 (Paz dos Santos n. pag.). 20 Diniz and Rangel explain that, while “la colección de Claridad tiene un perfil más poroso a la cultura popular brasileña, constituyendo un espesor mitopoético del que se alimentan los tópoi regionalistas del canon nacional […] las colecciones oficiales . . . optan por textos más herméticos, producidos por juristas-legisladores o polígrafos de dicción sociológica o historiográfica, tendientes a inter-comunicar a las élites intelectuales de ambos países” (Diniz and Rangel 363). 21 On nineteenth-century Afro-Argentines, in addition to the works cited here, see Borucki, Grandin, and Alberto and Elena. For explorations of Afro-Argentine literature of the period, see Lewis and Solomianski. 22 For comparative discussions of Argentine and Brazilian racial constructs, see Graham and Segato. 23 On “disavowal” and racial alterity in the Caribbean context, see Fischer. 24 On the Argentine “White legend,” see Alberto. 25 The Spanish word candombe designates certain Afro-Hispanic musical and dance forms practiced in Uruguay and Argentina, while the Portuguese candomblé refers to an Afro-New World religion originating in Brazil and related to Cuban Santería and Haitian Vodun. On candombe, see Andrews, Blackness. On candomblé, see Murphy and Segato.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering. All rights reserved.

Keywords

Afro-Argentines
Benjamin de Garay
Los sertones
South-South comparison
race
translation

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.5070/T49857565

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@article{197d6c2453c34f06aaf4c2ba874bc99e,

title = "Argentine Afterlives: Race, Hemispheric Comparison, and Translation in Benjamin de Garay's Los sertones",

abstract = "This article considers Argentine Benjamin de Garay's 1938 Spanish translation of Brazilian Euclides da Cunha's 1902 Os Sert{\~o}es as a transnational meditation on racialized processes of nation formation in South America. The translation paradoxically frames the linguistic and historical relationships between Brazil and Argentina in terms of both similarity and difference. While de Garay stresses the parallels between Brazil and Argentina in his translator's prologue, he also includes a glossary of supposedly untranslatable Portuguese terms, suggesting incommensurability between the two national experiences. Tellingly, many of the glossary's terms refer to racial categories. In this way, the de Garay text acts as a reflection on the divergent paths that Argentina and Brazil take in treating racial heterogeneity in their respective national narratives.",

keywords = "Afro-Argentines, Benjamin de Garay, Los sertones, South-South comparison, race, translation",

author = "Thomas Genova",

note = "Funding Information: Revisora de Textos de Historia y Geograf{\'i}a Americana and financed by the Ministerio de Justicia e Funding Information: 1 Research for this article was supported by a Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar Award to the Universidade Federal Fluminense in Rio de Janeiro and a fellowship at the IberoAmerican Institute in Berlin. Additional funding was made available by a University of Minnesota Grant-in-Aid, the University of Minnesota Imagine Fund, and the University of Minnesota Faculty Research Enhancement Fund. The author wishes to thank the archivists and librarians at the Academia Brasileira de Letras and the Biblioteca Nacional in Brazil and the staff and fellows at the Iberoamerican Institute in Berlin. 2 For a discussion of the origins of this quote, see Fuentes. For demographic information on the countries mentioned, see Mercado, “Brazil: Afro-Brazilians,” and Spinder. 3 See Candido, Schwarz, Fitz, Foster, Croce, Newcomb, and Reis for comparative studies of Brazilian and Spanish American literatures. 4 On the genealogical relationship between Civilizaci{\'o}n y barbarie and Os Sert{\~o}es, see Maul, Gonz{\'a}lez Echevarr{\'i}a, Bernucci, and Genova. 5 See Gomes for critical-translation considerations of de Garay and “A Literatura Argentina no Brasil” and Figueira for period assessments of his translation. My comparative regional studies approach is inspired by Ette{\textquoteright}s theorization of “transarea” studies and work by Spivak and T{\"o}t{\"o}sy de Zepetnek on the place of area studies in comparative literature. On regional lenses in comparative literary studies of Latin America, see Rama and Pizarro. 6 For a theorization of “paratexts” (prefaces, glossaries, etc.), see Genette. For a discussion of the place of paratexts in translation studies, see Batchelor. 7 For succinct biographical information on de Garay, see Maia 85-86 and Diniz and Rangel 361-363. On de Garay{\textquoteright}s activities as an “importer” of Brazilian literature into Argentina, see Sor{\'a} 114-20. 8 For a comprehensive history of Argentine translations of Brazilian texts, see Sor{\'a}. 9 Candido and Preuss (Transnational), meanwhile, have studied the circulation of Spanish-language texts in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Brazil. 10 References are to the 2003 edition. 11 For a theoretical discussion of equivalence in translation studies, see Toury. 12 Ingenieros{\textquoteright}s views were typical of a strong strain of Argentine thinking on race and inter-American issues at the time. Historian Eduardo Elena locates an alternate tradition in the writings of Ingeneiros{\textquoteright}s contemporary Manuel Ugarte, whose anti-imperial project identified Argentina{\textquoteright}s economic and social development at the time as an example of the capabilities of the “raza latina,” a formation that he understood in terms of white-dominated mestizaje. 13 On the Vargas regime{\textquoteright}s cultural interventions, see Candido, Levine, Abreu, and Johnson. 14 For a classic study of the racial exclusions underlying the discourse of mesti{\c c}agem, see Skidmore. On Latin American eugenics, see Stepan. For a history of the discourse of “racial democracy,” see Alberto and Hoffnung-Garskof. This last article also insightfully outlines “the limits of the myth-of-racial-democracy thesis” (299), detailing “the struggle of Afrodescendants” across the hemisphere “to accentuate [racial democracy{\textquoteright}s] more inclusionary meanings” in the face of the paradigm{\textquoteright}s notoriously exclusionary applications (267). 15 On relations between Brazil and the United States during this period, see Levine and Minella. 16 On the 1930s in Argentina, in addition to the sources cited here, see Luna and L{\'o}pez. 17 On debates concerning the legacy of nineteenth-century liberalism in Argentina during the first half of the twentieth century, see N{\'a}llim. 18 On literary polysystems and translation, see Evan-Zohar. 19 The Biblioteca{\textquoteright}s Brazilian counterpart was the Cole{\c c}{\~a}o Brasileira de Autores Argentinos, directed by Pedro Calmon and financed by the Brazilian foreign ministry (Diniz and Rangel 361). The collection published nine translations by J. Paulo de Medeyros between 1938 and 1951 (Paz dos Santos n. pag.). 20 Diniz and Rangel explain that, while “la colecci{\'o}n de Claridad tiene un perfil m{\'a}s poroso a la cultura popular brasile{\~n}a, constituyendo un espesor mitopo{\'e}tico del que se alimentan los t{\'o}poi regionalistas del canon nacional […] las colecciones oficiales . . . optan por textos m{\'a}s herm{\'e}ticos, producidos por juristas-legisladores o pol{\'i}grafos de dicci{\'o}n sociol{\'o}gica o historiogr{\'a}fica, tendientes a inter-comunicar a las {\'e}lites intelectuales de ambos pa{\'i}ses” (Diniz and Rangel 363). 21 On nineteenth-century Afro-Argentines, in addition to the works cited here, see Borucki, Grandin, and Alberto and Elena. For explorations of Afro-Argentine literature of the period, see Lewis and Solomianski. 22 For comparative discussions of Argentine and Brazilian racial constructs, see Graham and Segato. 23 On “disavowal” and racial alterity in the Caribbean context, see Fischer. 24 On the Argentine “White legend,” see Alberto. 25 The Spanish word candombe designates certain Afro-Hispanic musical and dance forms practiced in Uruguay and Argentina, while the Portuguese candombl{\'e} refers to an Afro-New World religion originating in Brazil and related to Cuban Santer{\'i}a and Haitian Vodun. On candombe, see Andrews, Blackness. On candombl{\'e}, see Murphy and Segato. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2022 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering. All rights reserved.",

year = "2022",

doi = "10.5070/T49857565",

language = "English (US)",

volume = "9",

pages = "138--162",

journal = "Transmodernity",

issn = "2154-1361",

publisher = "University of California, Merced",

number = "8",

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TY - JOUR

T1 - Argentine Afterlives

T2 - Race, Hemispheric Comparison, and Translation in Benjamin de Garay's Los sertones

AU - Genova, Thomas

N1 - Funding Information: Revisora de Textos de Historia y Geografía Americana and financed by the Ministerio de Justicia e Funding Information: 1 Research for this article was supported by a Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar Award to the Universidade Federal Fluminense in Rio de Janeiro and a fellowship at the IberoAmerican Institute in Berlin. Additional funding was made available by a University of Minnesota Grant-in-Aid, the University of Minnesota Imagine Fund, and the University of Minnesota Faculty Research Enhancement Fund. The author wishes to thank the archivists and librarians at the Academia Brasileira de Letras and the Biblioteca Nacional in Brazil and the staff and fellows at the Iberoamerican Institute in Berlin. 2 For a discussion of the origins of this quote, see Fuentes. For demographic information on the countries mentioned, see Mercado, “Brazil: Afro-Brazilians,” and Spinder. 3 See Candido, Schwarz, Fitz, Foster, Croce, Newcomb, and Reis for comparative studies of Brazilian and Spanish American literatures. 4 On the genealogical relationship between Civilización y barbarie and Os Sertões, see Maul, González Echevarría, Bernucci, and Genova. 5 See Gomes for critical-translation considerations of de Garay and “A Literatura Argentina no Brasil” and Figueira for period assessments of his translation. My comparative regional studies approach is inspired by Ette’s theorization of “transarea” studies and work by Spivak and Tötösy de Zepetnek on the place of area studies in comparative literature. On regional lenses in comparative literary studies of Latin America, see Rama and Pizarro. 6 For a theorization of “paratexts” (prefaces, glossaries, etc.), see Genette. For a discussion of the place of paratexts in translation studies, see Batchelor. 7 For succinct biographical information on de Garay, see Maia 85-86 and Diniz and Rangel 361-363. On de Garay’s activities as an “importer” of Brazilian literature into Argentina, see Sorá 114-20. 8 For a comprehensive history of Argentine translations of Brazilian texts, see Sorá. 9 Candido and Preuss (Transnational), meanwhile, have studied the circulation of Spanish-language texts in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Brazil. 10 References are to the 2003 edition. 11 For a theoretical discussion of equivalence in translation studies, see Toury. 12 Ingenieros’s views were typical of a strong strain of Argentine thinking on race and inter-American issues at the time. Historian Eduardo Elena locates an alternate tradition in the writings of Ingeneiros’s contemporary Manuel Ugarte, whose anti-imperial project identified Argentina’s economic and social development at the time as an example of the capabilities of the “raza latina,” a formation that he understood in terms of white-dominated mestizaje. 13 On the Vargas regime’s cultural interventions, see Candido, Levine, Abreu, and Johnson. 14 For a classic study of the racial exclusions underlying the discourse of mestiçagem, see Skidmore. On Latin American eugenics, see Stepan. For a history of the discourse of “racial democracy,” see Alberto and Hoffnung-Garskof. This last article also insightfully outlines “the limits of the myth-of-racial-democracy thesis” (299), detailing “the struggle of Afrodescendants” across the hemisphere “to accentuate [racial democracy’s] more inclusionary meanings” in the face of the paradigm’s notoriously exclusionary applications (267). 15 On relations between Brazil and the United States during this period, see Levine and Minella. 16 On the 1930s in Argentina, in addition to the sources cited here, see Luna and López. 17 On debates concerning the legacy of nineteenth-century liberalism in Argentina during the first half of the twentieth century, see Nállim. 18 On literary polysystems and translation, see Evan-Zohar. 19 The Biblioteca’s Brazilian counterpart was the Coleção Brasileira de Autores Argentinos, directed by Pedro Calmon and financed by the Brazilian foreign ministry (Diniz and Rangel 361). The collection published nine translations by J. Paulo de Medeyros between 1938 and 1951 (Paz dos Santos n. pag.). 20 Diniz and Rangel explain that, while “la colección de Claridad tiene un perfil más poroso a la cultura popular brasileña, constituyendo un espesor mitopoético del que se alimentan los tópoi regionalistas del canon nacional […] las colecciones oficiales . . . optan por textos más herméticos, producidos por juristas-legisladores o polígrafos de dicción sociológica o historiográfica, tendientes a inter-comunicar a las élites intelectuales de ambos países” (Diniz and Rangel 363). 21 On nineteenth-century Afro-Argentines, in addition to the works cited here, see Borucki, Grandin, and Alberto and Elena. For explorations of Afro-Argentine literature of the period, see Lewis and Solomianski. 22 For comparative discussions of Argentine and Brazilian racial constructs, see Graham and Segato. 23 On “disavowal” and racial alterity in the Caribbean context, see Fischer. 24 On the Argentine “White legend,” see Alberto. 25 The Spanish word candombe designates certain Afro-Hispanic musical and dance forms practiced in Uruguay and Argentina, while the Portuguese candomblé refers to an Afro-New World religion originating in Brazil and related to Cuban Santería and Haitian Vodun. On candombe, see Andrews, Blackness. On candomblé, see Murphy and Segato. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering. All rights reserved.

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - This article considers Argentine Benjamin de Garay's 1938 Spanish translation of Brazilian Euclides da Cunha's 1902 Os Sertões as a transnational meditation on racialized processes of nation formation in South America. The translation paradoxically frames the linguistic and historical relationships between Brazil and Argentina in terms of both similarity and difference. While de Garay stresses the parallels between Brazil and Argentina in his translator's prologue, he also includes a glossary of supposedly untranslatable Portuguese terms, suggesting incommensurability between the two national experiences. Tellingly, many of the glossary's terms refer to racial categories. In this way, the de Garay text acts as a reflection on the divergent paths that Argentina and Brazil take in treating racial heterogeneity in their respective national narratives.

AB - This article considers Argentine Benjamin de Garay's 1938 Spanish translation of Brazilian Euclides da Cunha's 1902 Os Sertões as a transnational meditation on racialized processes of nation formation in South America. The translation paradoxically frames the linguistic and historical relationships between Brazil and Argentina in terms of both similarity and difference. While de Garay stresses the parallels between Brazil and Argentina in his translator's prologue, he also includes a glossary of supposedly untranslatable Portuguese terms, suggesting incommensurability between the two national experiences. Tellingly, many of the glossary's terms refer to racial categories. In this way, the de Garay text acts as a reflection on the divergent paths that Argentina and Brazil take in treating racial heterogeneity in their respective national narratives.

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Argentine Afterlives: Race, Hemispheric Comparison, and Translation in Benjamin de Garay's Los sertones

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