Blackness, translation, and the (in)visible: Harryette Mullen's poetry in Brazilian Portuguese

This dissertation is a reflection on the "translation of blackness," or, more specifically, on my translations into Brazilian Portuguese of the work Muse & Drudge (1995) by the contemporary African-American female poet Harryette Mullen. It discusses the implications of my translations, in view of the complexities of Mullen's work, with considerations drawn on the cultural framework of blackness and black poetry in Brazil. Chapter One examines the ways in which Mullen's work goes beyond a representation of the visibility of blackness; how her elusive writing, made up of conflicting, fragmentary and allusive voices, expands the frontiers of black poetry itself. Mullen therefore complicates the belief that black poetry is incompatible with linguistic experimentation. Miscegenation is presented as a theoretical framework that foregrounds Mullen's disjunctive writing, enabling her not only to experiment with notions of non-purity and mixture, but also to underscore the actual condition of racial mingling in America. Chapter Two elaborates on the concept of miscegenation and the visibility of blackness in Brazil, highlighting the relevant contrasts with Mullen's own poetry. It is argued that miscegenation, while historically related to Brazilian national identity, is called into question by Afro-Brazilian activists, since it is said to blur the visibility they search for. Therefore, miscegenation does not represent a theoretical framework for contemporary Afro-Brazilian poetry, in contrast to Mullen's work. I claim that the search for the visibility of blackness is one of the most important aspects of Afro-Brazilian poetry. Chapter Three offers a discussion of my translations in the light of Jacques Derrida's insights. My translations open up new possibilities of meanings and associations in Portuguese, which means that the original text survives, in mutation, in another language/culture. This notion of translation also entails a relationship between the visible and the invisible, since different readings are raised by the invisible non-dit of the translations as well as by the visibility of new associations brought forth by the translator's interpretations. Such translations therefore have implications for the readership, since they foster the possibility of the "unexpected," allowing readers to uniquely evaluate the limits and potentialities of black poetry across black diaspora.