Authorship erasure in contemporary literature: the Pablo Katchadjian case

• Grant number: 17/25218-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: May 01, 2018
• End date: December 31, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Literature Theory
• Principal Investigator: Rejane Cristina Rocha
• Grantee: Nair Renata Amâncio
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

In 2009, professor and writer Pablo Katchadjian published the book El Aleph Engordado, a work that 'appropriates' the short story El Aleph (1949) of the famous Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges. The publishing of El Aleph engordado caused Maria Kodama, Borges' widow and heir of his rights, to sue Katchadjian, claiming that he was illegally appropriating her husband's intellectual work. It provoked a series of discussions among the specialized media and the readers' community, causing them to reflect, once again, on concepts such as authorship, plagiarism, appropriation and intertextuality. Bearing that in consideration, this research project proposes a study on those concepts, and how they are constantly being reviewed and reformulated in contemporary literature. In order to do that, we propose to analyze the representations of Borges as an Argentinian author, as well as the context of publication of El Aleph Engordado, and the procedures Katchadjian used to write it - which involve the concepts of post-production (BOURRIAUD, 2009), inespecificity (GARRAMUÑO, 2014), and aesthetics of imminence (CANCLINI, 2012). The theoretical framework will also include sources from scholars who leaned over the idea of authorship: Michel Foucault (2001), Roland Barthes (2004), Luciene Azevedo (2004), among others. (AU)