WHEN LITERATURE DOESN’T SPEAK YOUR LANGUAGE: An Analysis of Symbolic Boundaries and Exoticism in the Government-Supported Translation and Distribution of Brazilian Literature Abroad

The literary world is marked by unequal distribution flows in terms of the language and nationality of works, with the United States representing the global literary hyper-center (Heilbron, 1999). To fight such cultural hegemony, Brazil, a literary periphery country, has developed a translation grants programs by government organization Biblioteca Nacional (BN) to ensure the global dissemination of its literature, to positive effects (Feres & Brisolara, 2018). However, the history of Brazilian literature abroad is marked by an exoticizing gaze and nationality-based stereotypes (Minchillo, 2018; Saldanha, 2018). The aim of this research was to analyze how BN-supported Brazilian literature is distributed abroad, to uncover which authors and works benefit from such a policy program and how this literature is positioned by foreign publishers in terms of exoticizing symbolic boundaries and an othering, ‘literary tourist’ gaze (Saldanha, 2018). The research consisted of an explanatory sequential mixed methods design, beginning with a quantitative analysis to observe the distribution of BN-supported literary works from 2013 to 2020 and the way these works were visually marked in their foreign covers by exoticism markers based on Brazilian literary stereotypes. Chi-Square tests were utilized to find associations between the characteristics of the works, their authors and their foreign publishers. The quantitative results informed the sampling of the qualitative research phase, in which BN-supported works translated into English, French, Spanish or Portuguese from Portugal were chosen for a qualitative content analysis. The textual description of these works and their authors, written by their foreign publishers, were analyzed to further uncover how they were positioned in terms of exoticism or other nationality-related symbolic constructions. It was ultimately observed that, although there were no significant patterns of symbolic boundaries related to exoticizing and othering, these Brazilian works and authors were strongly read through a cosmopolitan gaze, a more recent view found in the foreign reception of Brazilian literature (Rissardo, 2015) that is strongly supported by BN itself (Brune, 2018). These findings demonstrate a weak, though still present, symbolic boundary-making in the foreign positioning of Brazilian literature, pointing more strongly to a cosmopolitan view of Brazilian writers, one that can potentially alienate authors and works unable to fit this global-minded gaze. Findings showed that, despite BN’s efforts, there is little diversity in the authors represented abroad through grants, with the distribution of writers mirroring the lack of diversity and equality in the Brazilian national literary field. Further studies are recommended, to refine the picture of Brazilian literature in translation (including research on works that do not rely on cultural policy grants) and to further observe how less-represented writers (such as black authors and those who are not from the regions of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo) are positioned abroad. More research on the struggle of periphery literary countries to combat cultural hegemony are necessary, to better understand the contemporary literary field and develop stronger tools to increase equality and diversity in the global flows of cultural production and distribution.