Colonialism and translation in travel writing: Depicting otherness

Descrizione del progetto

Come gli scrittori di viaggio hanno approcciato le persone di colore

A causa del background coloniale e imperiale delle potenze europee, la comunità nera e le persone di colore sono state storicamente ritratte in modo sarcastico, umoristico e razzista nelle rappresentazioni testuali e visive europee. Questi attributi possono essere riscontrati anche in paesi che non hanno una storia di schiavitù o colonialismo. Sostenuto dal programma di azioni Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA), il progetto DEPICTNESS mette a confronto le opere di due fumettisti, il belga Hergé e l’estone Gori, utilizzando un approccio multi-comparativo. Il progetto analizzerà immagini e frasi selezionate dalle loro opere, utilizzando un approccio semiotico per la selezione visiva e una metodologia postcoloniale per la selezione testuale. Il progetto intende anche creare una nuova categoria di scrittori di viaggio, il cosiddetto viaggiatore statico.

Obiettivo

Given colonial and imperial backgrounds on the history of many of the European powers, different geographical displacements and the lack of proper representation the Black community, and people of colour (PoC), are historically portrayed in a sarcastic, humorous and racist fashion in European textual and visual repertoire. One would assume that the traditions perpetuated by colonial powers in representation of otherness would be replicated in imperialist countries, but these attributes can also be seen in countries that have no slavery or colonial past. DEPICTNESS is an interdisciplinary postdoctoral project that lays in the in-between place of Translation studies and Semiotic studies (not to mention other relevant fields as Travel Writing and Comparative Literature). One of DEPICTNESS objectives is to analyse the works of Hergé (Belgian cartoonist) and Gori (Estonian caricaturist). Chosen images of both artists’ PoC characters will form the visual selection, while the phrases using petit nègre in the Hergé collection and its translations in Portuguese, Galician, English and Estonian will form the textual selection. Both selections will be analysed and compared to see how differently white and PoC characters are portrayed textually and visually by both artists; for the visual selection a Semiotics approach will be used, while for the verbal selection a postcolonial methodology applied to translation studies will analyse the implications of being described by an accent. Concerning this selection and the artists’ production, founded on Travel Writing theory, another objective of DEPICTNESS is to coin a travel writer category called the static traveller taking in consideration the analytical corpus of the project. The multi-comparative approach of DEPICTNESS plot imagery and textual selection in order to explore the representations made by Gori and Hergé.