Josely vianna baptista: A shamanistic poetics of translation and tradition

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the relationship between the practices of translation and of poetical creation in Josely Vianna Baptista's work, emphasizing the coexistence of diff erent cultural traditions and the consequent elimination of the dichotomies between mythical and historical, primitive and civilized, native and foreign. Th e paper also seeks to demonstrate that this process of coexistence and elimination implies the destabilization of the representational view of language and revives the link between the ethnic, the ethical and the political, promoting a conception of collective life that underscores its uniqueness.