The invisible blackness of Harryette Mullen's poetry: writing, miscegenation and what remais to be seen

Este ensaio aborda a poética de Harryette Mullen, poetisa afro-americana cuja obra questiona os limites que moldam as expectativas pela inteligibilidade acessível na literatura afro-americana. Os poemas de Mullen exploram as bordas da inteligibilidade, avançando para além das expectativas por uma forma visível/ Rev. Let., São Paulo, v.52, n.1, p.101-120, jan./jun. 2012. 119 inteligível de linguagem que abarcaria a experiência da negritude. Argumenta-se que a escrita na poesia de Mullen funciona como um processo de miscigenação ao jogar com a ilegibilidade da negritude, para além de uma linha visível de distinção entre o que é ou que deveria ser considerado como parte apropriada da negritude, o que possibilita novas formas de reflexão sobre a poesia como um instrumento politicamente significativo para se repensar o papel da poetisa e do poeta negros no espaço da diáspora negra.

Efeitos de ensino envolvendo equivalência entre palavra ditada, palavra escrita e objeto sobre a inteligibilidade da fala em adolescente com hipoplasia cerebelar

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Entre ditos e não ditos: a marcação social de diferenças de gênero e sexualidade por intermédio das práticas escolares da Educação Física

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

The Role of the (In)visible and the Secret in the Translation of Harryette Mullen s Muse & Drudge

This paper, based on Jacques Derrida’s thoughts in Des Tours of Babel, addresses the issue regarding the (in)visible in translation, by arguing that the latter, beyond the traditional conception of communication, produces a complex set of relations between the visible and the invisible, which highlights the values of the non-dit and the secret that take place in their relation to interpretation. This line of thought underpins the discussion of my translation of two poems from Muse & Drudge (1995), by the African-American poet Harryette Mullen, whose dense poetry displays un(expected) possibilities of meanings and associations that proliferate in translation. It is argued that every act of translation entails a relationship between that which is translated (and made visible or intelligible through this act) and that which remains invisible and secret by resisting a definitive translation, which, as such, requires further interpretations in search for intelligibility (or “visibility”). We analyze the extent to which such relation between the visible and the invisible takes part in the translation of the notion of blackness raised by Mullen’s poems and how her translated poetry dialogues with issues of reception in Brazilian culture.

The Invisible Blackness of Harryette Mullen's Poetry: Writing, Miscegenation, and What Remains to Be Seen

This essay addresses the poetics of Harryette Mullen, an awarded African-American female poet whose work questions the boundaries that shape the expectations for accessible intelligibility in African-American literature. Mullen’s poems skirt the edges of intelligibility by going beyond the expectations for a visible/intelligible form of language that would embrace the experience of blackness. I argue that writing in Mullen’s poetry works as process of miscegenation by playing on the illegibility of blackness, beyond a visible line of distinction between what is or should be considered part of blackness itself, which engages new forms of reflection on poetry as a politically meaningful tool for rethinking the role of the black (female) poet within the black diaspora.

Mais ou menos negra? Questões de negritude, tradução e a poesia de Harryette Mullen

This paper addresses issues regarding my translation of selected poems by Harryette Mullen, a rising African-American contemporary poet, whose dense poetry works on the black oral tradition, the experimentalism of writing, the (African-American) pop music, in addition to delving into issues such as the representation of (black) female sexuality. One of the complex aspects of her poetry is the notion of miscegenation, conceived as an aesthetic argument and as a constitutive condition of the identity of multiracial Americans. This concept establishes a textuality that questions the accessible intelligibility generally expected from black American poetry, insofar as a mosaic of dissonant voices are brought to light in her text, which makes it difficult to categorize. In Brazil, especially among politically engaged Afro-Brazilians, there has been criticism towards the praise of miscegenation, since the latter has been considered to support of the myth of racial democracy. Building on these aspects, we investigate the extent to which it is a challenge to translate her poetry – based on miscegenation and hybridity as aesthetic constructs – especially when taking into account the discursive locus of readers identified with an Afro-Brazilian aesthetic, particularly critical of miscegenation. From the point of view of translation, we evaluate the extent to which her poetry could be read by the predominant cultural discourse in Brazil, inclined to favor miscegenation as an integral concept of national identity, as a seductively experimental poetry. In view of this, one wonders whether this perspective makes hers poetry “less black” for Afro-Brazilian literary standards.

Ininteligibilidade e hermenêutica nas afinidades eletivas, de Goethe

In this paper, we analyze Goethe's Elective Affinities novel under the perspective of relations between intelligibility and hermeneutics, a kind of conflict explored by the author to establish a critical position in relation to the hermeneutic activity.

Corpos (con) sentidos: cartografando processos de subjetivação de produto(re)s de corporalidades singulares

Pós-graduação em Psicologia - FCLAS

Reflexões sobre homofobia e educação em escolas do interior paulista

This is a survey conducted in 2009 with 2,282 students of both sexes enrolled in the three grades of high school in three cities of the west of Sao Paulo state (Assis, Presidente Prudente and Ourinhos). The data collection instrument was a self-administered and anonymous questionnaire with 131 questions. In this article, we reflect on how in schools the research participants reproduce and reinforce the hegemonic discourses of control of sexualities guided by the attempt to promote heterosexuality as the only form of sexual intelligibility, to the detriment of other forms of expression of sexuality. We discuss how homophobia and the devices of social control of sexuality (re) produce prejudices and stereotypies, resulting in vulnerabilities that non-heterosexual teenagers have, such as homophobic victimization, social and affective isolation, ideations and suicide attempts. The study shows that the invariant were discrimination, homophobic violence and the insults that are perpetrated in the values and discourses of adolescents at school and in their family, demonstrating the institutionalization of homophobia as a regulatory practice of the psychological and social construction of gender and sexual identities. We highlight how important it is for the school to appropriate the means of deconstruction of heterocentric normativity to preserve the rights and citizenship of the people who do not identify with the prevailing models of heterosexuality.

A abdução em Peirce: um estudo hermenêutico

Pós-graduação em Educação Matemática - IGCE

Compreensão e produção oral de sentenças em crianças com deficiência auditiva pré-lingual usuárias de implante coclear

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Book Review of Archaeology as a Process: Processualism and Its Progeny by Michael J. O'Brien, R. Lee Lyman, and Michael Brian Schiffer

The field of archaeology incorporates a confusing assortment of ideas and approaches to the record. With studies ranging widely in ideology and goals, from strict descriptive materialism to sociological interpretation, language used to communicate key concepts (not to mention which concepts are key) also varies widely, resulting in low levels of mutual interest and intelligibility across the discipline. Archaeologists commonly ignore the majority of available literature as a result, further widening intellectual chasms.

The Perception of Natural, Cell Phone, and Computer-Synthesized Speech During The Performance Of Simultaneous Visual-Motor Tasks

This study investigated the influence of top-down and bottom-up information on speech perception in complex listening environments. Specifically, the effects of listening to different types of processed speech were examined on intelligibility and on simultaneous visual-motor performance. The goal was to extend the generalizability of results in speech perception to environments outside of the laboratory. The effect of bottom-up information was evaluated with natural, cell phone and synthetic speech. The effect of simultaneous tasks was evaluated with concurrent visual-motor and memory tasks. Earlier works on the perception of speech during simultaneous visual-motor tasks have shown inconsistent results (Choi, 2004; Strayer & Johnston, 2001). In the present experiments, two dual-task paradigms were constructed in order to mimic non-laboratory listening environments. In the first two experiments, an auditory word repetition task was the primary task and a visual-motor task was the secondary task. Participants were presented with different kinds of speech in a background of multi-speaker babble and were asked to repeat the last word of every sentence while doing the simultaneous tracking task. Word accuracy and visual-motor task performance were measured. Taken together, the results of Experiments 1 and 2 showed that the intelligibility of natural speech was better than synthetic speech and that synthetic speech was better perceived than cell phone speech. The visual-motor methodology was found to demonstrate independent and supplemental information and provided a better understanding of the entire speech perception process. Experiment 3 was conducted to determine whether the automaticity of the tasks (Schneider & Shiffrin, 1977) helped to explain the results of the first two experiments. It was found that cell phone speech allowed better simultaneous pursuit rotor performance only at low intelligibility levels when participants ignored the listening task. Also, simultaneous task performance improved dramatically for natural speech when intelligibility was good. Overall, it could be concluded that knowledge of intelligibility alone is insufficient to characterize processing of different speech sources. Additional measures such as attentional demands and performance of simultaneous tasks were also important in characterizing the perception of different kinds of speech in complex listening environments.

Cochlear implant in postlingual children: functional results 10 years after the surgery

The benefits of cochlear implants (CI) for communication skills are obtained over the years. There are but a few studies regarding the long-term outcomes in postlingual deaf children who grew up using the electronic device. Aim: To assess the functional results in a group of postlingual children, 10 years after using a CI. Methods: Ten postlingual deaf children, implanted before 18 years of age, participated in this study. We assessed: sentence recognition and speech intelligibility. We documented: device use and function and the patient's academic/occupational status. Study design: series. Results: The mean scores were 73% for sentence recognition in silence and 40% in noise. The average write-down intelligibility score was 92% and the average rating-scale intelligibility score was 4.15. There were no cases of device failure. Regarding educational/vocational status, three subjects graduated from the University. Five quit education after completing high school. Eight subjects had a professional activity. Conclusion: This study showed that cochlear implantation is a safe and reliable procedure. The postlingual profoundly hearing-impaired children after 10 years of CI use developed satisfactory levels regarding speech perception and intelligibility, and completed at least high school and were inserted in the labor market. Clinical Trials Registry: NCT01400178.

Do estilo em ciência e em história das ciências

Ao considerar o conhecimento científico como uma forma de pensamento simbólico, entende-se com isso não simples sistemas de signos, mas conteúdos de pensamento (expressos por conceitos) ligados entre si e que fazem sentido, que são, no espaço das representações mentais, os substitutos do "dado objetivo" que se supõe subjazer à experiência que fazemos do "mundo" pelos sentidos e, nesse nível indissociavelmente, pelo entendimento. Esse pensamento simbólico adquire densidade e consistência pela "tecelagem" realizada graças ao trabalho dos pensamentos individuais que se comunicam, social e culturalmente, inscritos no tempo da história. Da tensão dinâmica entre o sujeito do conhecimento, que busca a inteligibilidade (pela operação de sua razão), e a objetividade dos conteúdos que ele se propõe (inicialmente dados, depois modificados ou produzidos), resulta o movimento do pensamento científico e a transformação dos conhecimentos. Esse trabalho do pensamento simbólico é marcado por um estilo próprio a cada um, mas que em parte pode ser comum em contextos, escolas ou tradições. Em ciência e em história das ciências, o estilo intervém em dois níveis: o da abordagem "objetal" da produção das obras pelos cientistas e o da abordagem "reflexiva" da história epistemológica e da filosofia, que se interrogam sobre a significação tanto dos próprios conteúdos de conhecimento quanto do pensamento racional, simbólico, cuja função é manifestá-los.