Between past and present: modes of testimony in the poetry of Tamara Kamenszain

• Grant number: 14/04309-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: September 01, 2014
• End date: May 31, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Literature Theory
• Principal Investigator: Eduardo Sterzi de Carvalho Júnior
• Grantee: Mariane Tavares de Oliveira
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The aim of this research is, primarily, to analyze two books of Argentine poet and essayist Tamara Kamenszain, one of the main references of Latin American literature since the 90s. The books are El Ghetto (2012) and La Boca del testimonio : lo que dice la poesia (2007 ), the first a poetic book, the second a collection of essays. From a theoretical perspective on the testimony, based on authors such as Seligman - Silva (2003 , 2005, 2010 ) and Agamben (2008 ) , we propose to investigate how Kamenszain dialogues with her Jewish ancestry and how testimony is present in her language poetic and in the history of his people - with the trauma of Shoah (which returns with the death of his father ) or the horrors of Argentina's dictatorship. With this research we sought to relate the various forms of testimony in its various manifestations in contemporary society , especially studying the relationship between Kamenszains poetry and Paul Celans poetry of "unspeakable", as well the crossing it creates between the poetic and essayistic genres.