SAUDADE: A CASE OF UNTRANSLATABLE CO-OWNERSHIP

Abstract

Abstract: The first section of this paper introduces an alternative epistemology to this Portuguese word - one inclusive of various forms of displacement in Portugal, Brazil, and in-between. This is followed by a second section, exploring Emily Apter on saudade’s untranslatability and Lawrence Venuti’s response. This leads to a series of alternative, tentative suggestions for a more locally rooted orientation. The third and final section of this paper reveals how this word’s exalted status straddles two nations with competing claims to its ownership. Recovering the marginalised issue of literary ownership, tracing its reception from Emily Apter to Rebecca Walkowitz, this produces what I refer to as a case of ‘Untranslatable Co-Ownership’, whereby both nations have competing stakes in an ownership over the same word. Brazil and Portugal thereby come to invest that word with the conviction of cultural singularity (despite each nation’s necessarily exclusionary account).

Keywords: Lusophone studies; Translation studies; Comparative Literature; Untranslatability; Literary ownership.