Call for Contributions – 2025.1 INQUEERING TRANSLATION: Sexualities, Languages, and Texts

INQUEERING TRANSLATION:
Sexualities, Languages, and Texts

Dennys Silva-Reis (UFAC)
Jânderson Albino Coswosk (INES)

While queer translation remains a relatively underexplored area in Translation
Studies, it provides a compelling research context for examining the circulation of
dissident cultures, subjectivities, and LGBTexts through translation. This field sheds
light on how such texts are received by diverse audiences and how they engage with the
power dynamics influencing translators, editors, and other key actors. The mechanisms
at play ultimately shape the way these texts and their nuances navigate the target culture
(SILVA-REIS, 2024). Research at the intersection of translation and queer identity
offers valuable frameworks for gender and sexuality studies. It highlights alternative
forms of life, bodies, and experiences that overcome Cartesian and logocentric binary
schemes of the Western metaphysics.
By striking a pose and throwing shade on the lasting impacts of the Victorian
closet – as well as on the traces of LGBT-phobia in translation –, we are prompted to
inquire: How has queer identity been translated across a cosmopolitan spectrum,
including medical, legal, and historical texts, alongside literary, dramaturgical, filmic,
photographic, musical, and visual art media?
Based on this inquiry, we seek contributions that delve into translation practices
of LGBTexts associated with – or created by – members of the LGBT+ community,
across a variety of geographical locations and linguistic-semiotic systems. Topics
include, but are not limited to: i) the Old World and the “virgin” and feminized
Americas conceptualized as porno-tropics, class transvestisms, and sexual fetishes as
compiled by the authorized translators and interpreters of Empire (MCCLINTOCK,
2010); ii) the complex and multiple “Queer Africas” yet to be known and translated
(RÉA; PARADIS, AMANCIO, 2018); iii) disruptive forces of ballroom houses, whose
mothers – no tea, no shade! – not only channel glamorous women but also embody
1 Universidade Federal do Acre
2 Instituto Nacional de Educação de Surdos

resistance and resilience, extending from New York to Lagos, from Tokyo to São Paulo
and Salvador, in an ongoing process of bodily inscription through performance and
translation; iv) reflections that emphasize how the dominant archive can be reshaped to
portray diverse queertopias through the translation and reception of LGBT+ histories,
addressing gender oppression via decolonial and mestiza praxes, a queer of color
critique (FERGUSON, 2003), (trans)feminisms, together with Afro-continental-
diasporic and two-spirit Indigenous traditional knowledge and practices. We call on a
debate that promotes the creation of a cartography of queer translation, transcending
Latin American borders and challenging the perverse logic of technologies of gender,
regulatory sexual regimes, and other CIStemic forms of oppression rooted in
heteronormativity.

Papers in Portuguese, French, Spanish and English shall be accepted.
Deadline for submissions: March 1 st , 2025
Contacts for questions: reisdennys@gmail.com / jandersoncoswosk@gmail.com

References

FERGUSON, Roderick A. Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.
MCCLINTOCK, Anne. Couro imperial: raça, gênero e sexualidade no embate colonial.
Trad. Plínio Dentzien. Campinas: Editora da Unicamp, 2010.
REA, Caterina; PARADIS, Clarisse Goulart; AMANCIO, Izzie Madalena Santos
(orgs.). Traduzindo a África Queer. Salvador: Editora Devires, 2018.
SILVA-REIS, Dennys. Preliminares: LGBTextos em Tráfegos e Traduções Queer. In:
SILVA-REIS, Dennys; FLORES, Vinicius Martins (orgs). Estudos da Tradução e
Comunidade LGBT: Sobre vozes entendidas e transformistas textuais. Salvador: Editora
Devires, 2024, p. 17-34.