TRANSLATING FEMINISM: A DECOLONIZING SUBSIDY

Abstract

The present article regards translation as a fundamental subsidy for reading, literacy and resignification both in and of the decolonization process of feminist thought. The paper contextualizes the role of translation in the Information Age, recollecting the history of the universalist feminist movement, differentiating it from the geographically and ethically localized feminism, which is able to contemplate the different oppressions experienced by Black, Latin and Indigenous women, among others, in order to argue that translation has been an important tool for such women to get to know the Others and themselves better. Moreover, the lack of translations of works by renowned foreign Black feminist thinkers, in the Brazilian publishing market, is highlighted, and the literary and theoretical works by Brazilian Black writers and intellectuals that have been published abroad, through translation, mainly in English and French, are mapped. In addition, important contributions of Black Brazilian thinkers, whose works reflect on the relationship between translation and feminism in Brazil, are pointed out, despite the undeniable absence of other feminisms propagation in and from Brazil. Finally, the article defends that translation must be an act of everybody and in every sphere, both in practice and theory, and vice-versa, in Brazil and around the globe.