Anger, Faith and Bewildered Fragments of Self: The Shaping of Ethos in an Argentinean Translation of Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis

Abstract

4.48 Psychosis is British playwright Sarah Kane’s final play. Its opening took place at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in London in June 2000, only a few months after Kane’s suicide at King’s College Hospital. The initial reception of the play was surrounded by controversy in the United Kingdom, with some reviewers and critics interpreting the theatrical text as primarily autobiographical (Urban 2011, p. 304; Claycomb 2012, p. 113). Informed by a socio-discursive perspective, which specifically looks at the construction of ethos (Amossy 2009, 2010; Author 2017; Author 2019, 2020), this research aims at contributing to the study of subjectivity in translated drama. Focusing on Rafael Spregelburd’s Argentinean Spanish translation of 4.48 Psychosis, published by Losada in 2006, we explore the shaping of subjectivity in the translated dramatic text highlighting the way in which the persona of the translator builds within and beyond the translated text. The case under study features the task of a drama translator who, probably on account of his vital presence in the Argentinean theatrical landscape, is often perceived as integral to the performance text. In this article, we will argue that an analysis of 4.48 Psychosis and, for that matter, of the translation of the play, based on the facts of the playwright’s life, may lack in substance and is, therefore, unproductive to assess the complex quality of the piece. While Spregelburd’s translation uses dramatic strategies and techniques that successfully foster the image or ethos of a rupturist playwright, it still stresses the autobiographical character often attributed to the text. This is particularly evident in the female gender construction of the main voice in the play, which is ambiguous in the source text. Our analysis therefore specifically looks at certain subjective forms in the translated text such as the use of inflected female marked adjectives. In a complementary fashion, our study also identifies the use of masculine forms and masculine generic forms to translate indeterminate forms in the original, which help establish antagonisms between female and male construed identities in the target text. This view, which becomes dominant in the translated text, is reinforced by the image or ethos of the translator as this is shaped within the translated dramatic text and its paratexts. Our analysis also explores the subjective construction of the translator’s persona and positioning in the target dramatic text and system. Assessed within the framework of Spregelburd’s whole production, detailed consideration is given to the use of paratextual devices as well as the translator’s own declarations in interviews.