Translanguaging as a Tool for Decolonizing Interactions in a Space for Confronting Inequalities¹

Práticas Translíngues como uma ferramenta para decolonizar interações em um espaço para confrontação de desigualdades

ABSTRACT

Taking into account the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, from the UN, this article addresses the construction of artistic contexts where students, teachers, principals, coordinators, sign language interpreters, artists, and researchers work together with the Sustainable Development Goal 10 - Reduce inequality within and among countries, in a Project entitled Digitmed Program. This project gathers deaf and hearing, migrants and Brazilian participants from very poor and wealthy communities in discussions about the development of interdisciplinary curriculums, which aim at de-encapsulation of ideas, contents, roles, perspectives, grades, languages spoken, economic background, among others. In this article, the involvement of deaf and hearing participants in the interdisciplinary work with poems as a form of art for resistance will be described. The potential of translanguaging is analysed as a revolutionary possibility for tackling inequality and marginalisation.

Keywords:
Translanguaging; decolonization; interactions; inequalities

RESUMO

Levando em conta a Agenda 2030 para o Desenvolvimento Sustentável, da ONU, este artigo trata da construção de contextos artísticos em que estudantes, professores, diretores, coordenadores, intérpretes de linguagem de sinais, artistas e pesquisadores trabalham em conjunto com o Objetivo de Desenvolvimento Sustentável 10 - Reduzir a desigualdade dentro e entre países, em um projeto intitulado Programa Digitmed. Este projeto reúne surdos e ouvintes, migrantes e participantes brasileiros de comunidades muito pobres e ricas em discussões sobre o desenvolvimento de currículos interdisciplinares, que objetivam a desencapsulação de idéias, conteúdos, papéis, perspectivas, série/ano, línguas, histórico econômico, entre outros. Neste artigo, será descrito o envolvimento de participantes surdos e ouvintes no trabalho interdisciplinar com poemas como forma de arte de resistência. O potencial das práticas translíngues é analisado como uma possibilidade revolucionária para combater a desigualdade e a marginalização.

Palavras-chave:
tradução; descolonização; interações; desigualdades

Introduction

We live in a world that poses many ethical and geopolitical challenges in respect to how we deal with the inequalities of the present society. There has been an increase in the development of differences between rich and poor countries and social groups, democracy and autocracy, information and ignorance, justice and injustice which imposes s radically excluding patterns of living and being. According to Mignolo (2015, p. 461), we still live a form of coloniality which is manifested in the racism and patriarchy that “governs cognitive, ethic, esthetic, religious, economic, political, among other types of decisions and classifications⁴”. It creates increasing exploitation, violence, wars, oppressions, injustice and extreme inequalities. All this is accentuated by the reality of a devastating disease (COVID 19) which has recently posed more threats than ever to all humanity.

This paper examines Mignolo’s concept of a grammar of decolonialism, where an open space for learning with and from the other is mandatory, and where it is possible to overcome the ignorance of different forms of living, being and feeling which prevent the development of our human agency (Miglievich-Ribeiro, 2014). We ask what it takes to be remade as decolonized subjects (Mignolo, 2015) and to effect a decolonization of economic, political, religious, esthetic aspects of living.

According to Míguez Passada, this requires the analysis of discourses that enables reflection about “what was said and not said, how it was said and the sensations and perceptions that mediate the people, who are raising their experiences, their pains, their joys, their expectations, etc” (2019, p. 6).

In this context, this article poses the question: how can multiple voices in society be heard, valued and empowered?

Using a translanguaging framework we analyze the interaction among participants of a university-school project that gathers hearing and deaf, migrant and Brazilian students, teachers, principals, coordinators and researchers in the discussion of interdisciplinary curriculum proposals for de-encapsulation. Most of these participants experience marginalization as individuals or groups in a society where their voices are not heard or acknowledged. Many of them experience what Liberali (2020) has been calling necroeducation in parallel to the idea of necropolitics (Mbembe, 2016). Necropolitics is seen as the power of governments to decide who will live and who will die and how they will do it. Similarly, necroeducation can be understood as a type of educational system in which some decide who will succeed and who will fail the educational system based on their economic potential.

The rules of social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic, for instance, expose entrenched societal inequalities and the gap between those who have and those who do not, directly conflicting with the concept of meritocracy. In this difficult time, some students from the private institutions in Brazil have access to all kinds of activities through multiple platforms and remote applications, while students from public institution, living in remote locations or in more impoverished contexts ,were left with nothing to eat and almost no access to any form of education. In other words, they were left to live the death-in-life, expressed by Mbembe (2016).

Translanguaging in this iniquitous context refers to the different ways in which individuals draw on a range of language resources to make meaning, without adherence to (named) language boundaries and according to the social circumstances (Heller, 2007; Makoni & Pennycook, 2006; Otheguy, García, & Reid, 2015). This concept represents a shift away from defining language use in terms of separate languages and provides a framework to explore linguistic practices in a way that does not “imagine languages as clear cut entities” (Busch, 2012, p. 507) but that pays attention to the linguistic resources that people possess and deploy according to context and audience.

Translanguaging seems to contribute to a process of de-encapsulation, understood as the expansion of participants’ horizons of action on top of the functions and tasks currently assigned to them, creating foundations for the development of mobility (Liberali, 2020). It involves the construction of school proposals in order to break representational limits and promote new forms of being, acting, feeling, knowing. The development of curricular de-encapsulation may enable the understanding of how school knowledge, usually fixed and marked by unique and absolute true perspectives, can be overcome with what Santos (2008) calls a knowledge ecology, derived from different sources. In this sense, learning processes are thought to happen outside of capsules when it comes to talking about the participants, the sources, the media and the educational institution itself.

The paper begins with a critique of translanguaging as a conceptual framework for understanding and describing communication in a multilingual world and for the purposes of this project. We then describe the context of Digitmed Program and present the analyses of two episodes from the 2019 version of the project where participants worked with interdisciplinary artistic tasks to live a soiree, aiming at the development of the Sustainable Development Goal 10.

Our analysis centers on two episodes that illustrate the different ways in which translanguaging practices, in a de-encapsulated paradigm, can support a decolonized involvement of all the different participants in artistic and educational project activities.

Our concluding discussion reflects on the role of translanguaging for decolonizing interactions and creating what Freire called the “viable unheard of”.

Translanguaging in culturally diverse societies

In order to participate fully in the different spaces, subjects need to develop mobility, that is, the possibility to move within different contexts with the semiotic resource to be accepted, respected, effective. Moving around involves the mobility of linguistic and other semiotic resources in time and space, as stated by Blackledge and Creese (2017). Mobility also involves temporal and spatial trajectories of human actions, that is, language in motion, with various spatiotemporal frames interacting with one another (Blommaert, 2010). In this sense, Pennycook (2012) explains how place and locality become less important than the flows of people and languages through the landscape.

To have mobility, subjects need to learn how to activate the collective resources available to them at a certain point in time (Blommaert, 2013). In other words, as pointed out by Blommaert and Backus (2011), subjects need to access their repertoire taking into account their social and cultural itineraries in order to maneuver and navigate with them and to learn how to place themselves in the different social scenes they inhabit or visit. Busch (2015) expands this idea of repertoire to a range of choices available to a speaking subject, not limited only by grammatical rules and knowledge of social conventions. Going even further, Pennycook and Otsuji (2015) state that repertoires can be viewed both from the perspective of individual trajectories (with all the social, historical, political, economic, and cultural effects this may entail) and also from the perspective of the resources at play in a particular place.

The concept of repertoire has thus evolved to keep pace with the expanding linguistic diversity and language practices of communities where the interaction across and between social groupings and cultures gives rise to increasingly dynamic and mobile language practices (Blommaert & Backus, 2012; Vertovec, 2007). In this context repertoire is understood to mean the embodiment of the experiential and practical ways people deploy their resources in different social spaces. This encompasses multidimensional constellation of linguist resources, values, and practices that are “attached to an individual life and a life experience” (Blommaert, 2008, p. 16) and all of the “constructs and narratives therein” (Blackledge & Creese, 2010, p. 224).

According to Bakhtin (1981) in order to become a human being, subjects engage with the words of the others (their voices) and assimilate them, in the historical flow of social relationships and struggles. Blackledge and Creese (2017) emphasize that this ideological process of becoming is ever-present and ongoing. And, in this, translanguaging has an essential impact. It enables bringing into play voices which may index participants’ localities, social histories, circumstances, and identities.

García and Wei (2014, p. 22) state that translanguaging has to do with “speakers’ construction and use of original and complex interrelated discursive practices that cannot be easily assigned to one or another traditional definition of a language, but that make up the speakers’ complete semiotic repertoire”. Besides, translanguaging involves, for Canagarajah (2013), an idea that communication transcends individual languages and involves different semiotic resources. For the author, a language is not limited to a semiotic resource among those available, but all the semiotic resources that work together in the construction of meaning.

From a pedagogical perspective, García (2009) defines translanguaging as the possibility of giving voice to minorities. In this regard, translanguaging possesses a transformative power and the potential to remove an idea of hierarchy between languages. It is connected to the constant adaptation of resources in the service of meaning-making and in tending to the singularities in the pluralities that make up multilingual social spaces (García & Sylvan, 2011).

In the context of deaf-hearing interaction Swanwick (2017) defines repertoire as ways of knowing and using sign and spoken/written languages that are shaped by personal biographies and that are constantly in flux and describes deaf-hearing translanguaging as the flexible use of these repertoires for meaning making. She states that language learning and use can be seen as social, cultural and linguistic experiences which are influenced by individual, social and contextual influences. Language practices and repertoires evolve because of them. The author points out the need to talk about the plurality of languages and the resources to make meaning. In this sense, to view language as a practice or as the activity of languaging located in context demands an understanding of the dynamisms of what one does with language and how, by it, identities and relationships with others can be created. In this respect, following Gárcia and Wei’s perspective (2014), Swanwick (2017, p. 16) understands translanguaging as “the ways in which individuals ‘pool’ their language knowledge to construct something new in order to make meaning”.

Using this framework we examine translanguaging as a tool for, or expression of, decolonization in deaf-hearing interactions in the multilingual space of the Digitmed Program: A particular space for learning that focuses on social, political, economic, cultural, educational and ethical injustices. The following section presents the context of the project and how it is organized.

The Project

The Digitmed Program⁵, which started in 2013 as an international research project, is a non-profit, research-based project, organized with a multicultural group of hearing and deaf people of different ages, nationalities, ethnicities and economic and social classes. The project aims to join different school participants to develop projects in their communities and learn together how to expand their actions in broad territories, with repertoires that enable transformative agentive activities. Digitmed participants include masters, doctors, master and doctoral students from two programs at Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo - PUCSP), as well as researchers from different universities such as USP, UFPE, UEPI; school managers, teachers and students of public and private schools; sign language interpreters and parents.

It brings together participants from different schools in the state of São Paulo from different contexts (schools in favelas, elite schools, schools for the deaf, schools with immigrants). It aims to promote the development of interdisciplinary curriculums through the experience of de-encapsulated proposals. In order to do so, it works through the creation of dramatic events that enhance personal experiences in search of social transformations.

The project is organized through monthly meetings that take place in an auditorium on the premises of the PUCSP once a month, always on Saturdays, from 9:00a.m. to 1:00 p.m. The meetings are the triggers for the periodical activities developed in each of the schools.

In 2019, the monthly meetings had the motto of overcoming social inequalities, based on the Sustainable Development Goal 10 - Reduce inequality within and among countries. The meetings were organized based on experiences in the artistic field: literary soiree, slam battles, adaptations of the literary work “The Miserables” by Victor Hugo, theater, Graphite, among others. In this sense, participants were invited to join activities that aimed at understanding, criticizing, and planning forms of intervening in their school contexts and in their neighborhoods using arts. Participants engaged in performative activities to creatively develop ways to overcome constraints and face conflict as the force that moves everyone beyond their immediate reality (Freire, 1970).

At each of these meetings, Digitmed participants experienced the artistic and cultural manifestations and discussed the issues of social inequality that permeate each of them. By living and discussing, the group re-signified the forms of participation in these activities, discovering and creating new possibilities to live them in school, in the community and also in society, as critical agents, activists and transformers.

For the purpose of this article, two episodes from one meeting of 2019 were selected. They were chosen as a means to exemplify how participants joined the activities and how their voices were taken into consideration for the construction of meaning and as an attempt to move beyond their initial status.

Analysis

In order to respond to our main question how can multiple voices in society be heard, valued and empowered, this article draws on the multimodal analysis of the first meeting of 2019 to evaluate:

• the multimodal resources, life experiences and perspectives that participants brought to the scene, including gestures, postures, types of knowledge, familiarity with certain traditions and ways of acting,

• the different ways in which participants attempted to share and understand difference e.g. place themselves in the scene expressing together similar emotional states,

• how meaning making and sharing is facilitated by translanguaging.

The analysis initiates with the description of the meeting as a means to understand the activity developed with participants and emphasizes two episodes involving the interaction between deaf and hearing participants⁶.

Table 1
Chosen episodes

Episode	Type of activity	Participants
1	Sharing a performatic poem created in small groups with the big group	three teachers, one deaf student, five students from different schools, with varying ages and two interpreter-researchers presenting to the whole audience of participants
2	Presentation in the performatic soiree by a deaf student	One deaf student, one deaf teacher who used to be a student in the project, all the other participants as the audience.

The Literary Soiree Meeting, 2019

For the first meeting of 2019, the topic of the year, defying social inequalities, was developed through experiences with poetry in the recreation of soirees. Participants had the opportunity to play with different materials that described or exemplified how soirees were conducted or developed throughout history and in different cultures. They engaged with activities, texts, videos, films and made descriptions of the activity of soiree with the help of the triangle that represents an activity in the Activity Theory perspective as developed by Yrjo Engeström, in 1987.

First Task

For the first task, participants were invited to connect different pieces of different versions of a famous Brazilian poem Canção do Exílio (The song of exile⁷), by Gonçalves Dias. Each version written at different historical moments discussed the description of the country from different perspectives and with different purposes. After they discussed in small groups the theme of the poems, their contexts, and different versions, they were invited to create their own version and a performance to present it to the big group.

Episode 1

In one of the groups where hearing participants and a deaf student, Isaac, were presenting, the choice was for one of the teachers to read the poem while another participant (a student) would touch the others who had different poses. The poem initiated with a very destructive perspective and each time a participant was touched, s/he would go down on her/his knees. The last one to be touched was the deaf student. Pictures 1 and 2 shows the hearing participant touching the deaf student and looking at the interpreter to check if and when he should move down so that the deaf student could also go down to create the idea of depression infused by the poem.

Picture 1
hearing student touches deaf student.

Picture 2
Deaf and hearing students go down on their knees.

In this first scene of episode one it is possible to see students making use of gestures and their familiarity with the presence of interpreters in order to create the scene of the performance. Both deaf and hearing students try to express together similar emotional states and understand that they need to rely on different resources in order to do so. Translanguaging here happens through the gestures, the imitation of the movement and resorting to the interpreter. Through these means the students manage to convey to the audience the general meaning they are trying to invest the scene with: depression. As the poem changed the tone to a more hopeful perspective, another participant (interpreter-researcher) joined in and invited participants one by one to stand (as in picture 3).

Picture 3
Interpreter-researcher invites participants to stand.

Putting her hands up and following the tone of the poem being read, the interpreter-researcher gets closer to each participant who cheerfully stands. This goes on till the deaf student who needs no support to understand the procedure to follow. In this scene again, the gestures had a great impact in the performance of all individuals and made it possible for the deaf student and hearing participants to create the performance together.

Picture 4 shows participants all standing in a more excited perspective. All the others cheered them both clapping and doing the sign for clapping.

Picture 4
Congratulating the group

An important aspect to be discussed is that although, like all the other performances, the poem created and performed was read by someone, the performance of this group focuses essentially on the absence of sounds being made by the various participants. Body movement, gestures, and proxemics were combined in a translanguaging perspective that made it possible for all to create and understand the poem and the feelings the performers wanted to provoke in the audience. Different participants (hearing student, teacher and interpreter-researcher) assumed main roles in the performance, by choosing what they wanted to do and how they preferred to participate. In this they resorted to their life experiences in order to make it possible for all the different roles in the performance to be created.

In this activity, it is possible to see that the text was created with different interrelated modes to create the meaning the group intended to express. First, the presenters’ facial expressions and gestures helped to convey the feeling of depression expressed by the poem. The tone of voice used by the reader was first very gloomy, changing into a more cheerful and happier one by the end, just as the facial expressions and gestures did as well. Similarly, the student who performed the destructive tone used very heavy gestures, moving slowly and smugly looking at each person. On the contrary, the interpreter-researcher who performed the more hopeful tone had ample and faster movements, throwing up her arms as if to invite the others to do the same.

The performance construed a collective social stance which shows a contrast to the positions normally presented in colonized contexts. Involving and allowing different resources in the production of the poem, the ensemble created a contrast to the conventional ways of producing art and opened perspectives on how to use translanguaging to contribute to the development of human activist agency.

Last activity

In the last activity of the meeting, participants were invited to bring their contributions (already requested before the meeting) to the soiree that was enacted and conducted by the 19-year-old researcher - João. He is a student who had participated in the project in previous years and who, after graduating from high school in the year before, decided to join the researchers’ group. Taking the position of a host, João invited presenters to the front of the auditorium for their participation. The pictures 6 below show participants in their presentations:

Picture 5
João invites participants to present.

Pictures 6
Participants presenting their poems.

During the presentations, students, teachers, principals, researchers either recited a poem of their own or one they liked very much from different authors. While poems were being recited the sign language interpreters were signing for the deaf students.

All participants had a chance to share their life experiences through different media, using gestures, tone of voice, rhythm, word choices, prompts, costumes in order to share their ideas. Adults, young people, teens and kids made their performance a means to express opinions on racism, homophobia, poverty, misogyny, religious repression, among others - different kinds of oppression they had experienced. The audience reacted crying, cheering, clapping, shouting the presenters’ name and using the funny jokes that are part of the group repertoire. Diversity was worked through the different means, such as samba lyrics, traditional poems, slams, personal reports in poetic format, songs, that helped express the different voices.

Episode 2

During this final task, when the deaf student decided to recite his poem, the Digitmed coordinator suggested that he do it in sign language only first and later he would do it again with interpretation, if necessary. The idea was that participants would give their whole attention to the deaf participant who was a student at that time (Isaac has finished high school and now acts as a researcher at his old school, just like João). Apart from him, there was also another deaf participant, Bruna, who used to study at his school but had now graduated from Pedagogy at university and who also joined the meeting regularly.

The request to avoid interpretation in the first moment aimed at challenging participants to go beyond their comfort zone and try to engage with sign language as a form of constructing meaning. Although all events have interpreter to mediate the relationship between deaf and hearing participants, sign language is frequently marginalized as the main support for interaction since the great majority of the participants either have few contact with deaf people and some are meeting a deaf person for the first time at the project. The challenge aimed at participants exercising their power of translanguaging in order to make meaning and share experiences.

Table 2
shows the transcribed and translated versions of Isaac’s speech and pictures 7 show moments of his performance.

Glosa / gloss	Translation into Portuguese	Translation into English
ENTÃO, BOM DIA OU BOA TARDE TODOS. EU SOU SURDO. EU QUERO APRESENTAR VOCÊS. EU SOU ÚNICO SURDO TAMBÉM MULHER SURDA DOIS. EU QUERO APRESENTAR VOCÊS CONHECER O QUE É LIBRAS. ELA (APONTANDO O DEDO INDICADOR PARA O SINAL DE LIBRAS) NÃO É LINGUAGEM NÃO. LIBRAS É PRÓPRIO SURDO TUDO. ENTÃO EU QUERO SURDO JÁ ABRIR MUNDO OUVINTE VER DEIXAR-PRA-LÁ CONTINUAR DESPREZAR SURDO SOFRER TAMBÉM DELE REPRIMIR MAIS AINDA PIOR FAMÍLIA DEIXAR-PRA-LÁ POUCO APOIO POUCO ESFORÇO ANIMAR NÃO, DENTRO ESCOLA BILÍNGUE SURDO PROFESSOR ANIMAR SURDO SENTIR TEMA SURDO CHAMAR SURDO TODOS FAMÍLIA SEGUNDO TEMA. TAMBÉM TUDO OUVINTE FALAR SURDO NÃO TEM DIREITO NÃO CAPAZ, NÃO, SURDO TEM CAPAZ SIM SABE PROFISSÃO MAS UM PROBLEMA UM SURDO NÃO SABER PORTUGUÊS MAS SABE VISUAL SABE MEXER SURDO ESFORÇO ESTUDAR PORTUGUÊS PARA COMUNICAÇÃO POR CAUSA TODOS OUVINTE. MAS OUVINTE NÃO, IGUAL, TROCAR APRENDER LIBRAS PARA SURDO NUNCA. SURDO CONTINUAR ORALIZAR, ESCRAVO PEQUENO FONOAUDIÓLOGO ORALIZAR PARA COMUNICAÇÃO FAMÍLIA QUER IMPLANTE COCLEAR OU APARELHO. MAS SURDO NUNCA ESCONDIDO FECHADO SEMPRE ABERTO MAS PROBLEMA É DESPREZAR. SURDO SEMPRE CRESCER SOFRER ATÉ HOJE. EU SOFRO CONTINUAR VOU OPRIMIR AINDA ATE HOJE. OBRIGADO.	Então, bom dia ou boa tarde a todos. Eu sou surdo e gostaria de fazer uma apresentação a vocês. Eu sou o único surdo hoje em conjunto uma surda, então estamos em dois. O que eu gostaria de apresentar para que vocês conheçam é sobre a Libras. Libras não é somente linguagem. Libras pertence aos surdos. Os surdos estão abertos ao mundo apesar de os ouvintes continuarem não nos darem a devida importância, o que nos faz sofrer. A pior parte se dá com a família que também despreza o surdo, não dá suporte e nem encoraja. Na escola bilíngue para surdos os professores encorajam os surdos. O sentimento que temos é tipo o surdo chamar os outros surdos de segunda família, tipo isso. Alguns ouvintes pensam que não temos direito a ter direitos e que não somos capazes. Somos capazes sim! O único problema é que não sabemos bem o português em compensação usamos recursos visuais e manuais aliado ao nosso esforço em estudar língua portuguesa para nos comunicarmos com os ouvintes. Infelizmente a troca não é recíproca pois os ouvintes raramente demonstram o mesmo interesse em aprender Libras. Surdo continuam tendo que oralizar, desde crianças somos escravizados a ir em uma fonoaudióloga para oralizarmos com nossas famílias como forma de comunicação, e ainda a família quem decide se faremos implante coclear ou usaremos aparelho auditivo. Os surdos estão abertos e não escondidos ou fechados, mas o grande problema é o desprezo. Surdo cresce neste sofrimento. Sou oprimido e sofro ainda até hoje.	So, good morning or good afternoon to everyone. I am deaf and would like to make a presentation for you. Today I am the only deaf student today together with a deaf girl (Bruna), so we are in two. What I would like to present to you is about Libras. Libras is not just a language. Libras belongs to the deaf. The deaf are open to the world, although the hearing continue not to give due importance to them, what make us suffer. The worst part is with a family that also despises the deaf, does not support or encourage them. At the bilingual school for deaf, the teachers encourage the deaf students. The feeling we have is like we could call the other deaf a second family. Some hearing people think that they are not entitled to rights and that we are not capable. Yes, we are capable! The only problem is that we do not know Portuguese well enough. We use visual and manual resources combined with our effort to study the Portuguese language to communicate with the hearing. Unfortunately, the exchange is not reciprocal, as hearing people rarely show the same interest in learning Libras. Deaf people still have to oralize, since we are enslaved to a speech therapist to oralize with our families as a form of communication, and also it is the family that decides whether to do cochlear implant or use a hearing aid. Deaf people are open and not hidden or closed, but the big problem is contempt. Deaf grows in this suffering. I am oppressed and suffer to this day.

Pictures 7
Different angles of Isaac’s performance

Isaac’s presentation, with his ideas, facial expressions, gestures and movements, tries to convey to the group his emotions in relation to the language issues that have created constraints or possibilities for his life with friends and family. Besides, he is also emphatically explaining the role of libras (Brazilian sign language) in his life as well as in the life of most deaf people: What I would like to present to you is about Libras. Libras is not just a language. Libras belongs to the deaf.

He also uses his turn to denounce the lack of connection and disrespect the deaf experiment in their relationship with the hearing. He does that not by simply complaining but by showing his suffering: The deaf are open to the world, although the hearing continue not to give due importance to them, what make us suffer. His life experience clears out for the audience the importance of belonging to a deaf community: The feeling we have is like we could call the other deaf a second family. Besides, he recognizes the effort to interact with the hearing is one sided most of the times since the whole effort to create meaning is mostly done by the deaf: Unfortunately, the exchange is not reciprocal, as hearing people rarely show the same interest in learning Libras. In his presentation, Isaac is able to expose the oppression he lives and the demand he wants the world to fulfill: Deaf people are open and not hidden or closed, but the big problem is contempt. Deaf grows in this suffering. I am oppressed and suffer to this day.

Isaac attempted to place himself in the scene, expressing his emotional state and using a range of multimodal means to build his ideas by sharing them with the hearing group in a safe space where he could use art to express who he was, how he felt and what he wanted to demand from the world.

When Isaac finished his presentation, before he could recite again, Carla, a researcher and interpreter, asked the group if they wanted to say anything they had understood from Isaac’s recitation. Some hearing participants made some suggestions such as “he showed an emotion, a strong emotion”, “he said things about learning together”, “he talked about exclusion” (said another participant gesturing with her hands in the same way as Isaac had done), “he talked about the cochlear implant”, “he sees himself as the lyric ‘I’”, “It sounded like he had suffered a lot as well”, “I felt something very heavy, a tension, as if he was carrying something, and people threw some things at him”.

In order to present their ideas, participants had to resort to their life experience and language resources in order to place themselves in the position of grasping possible meanings and empathizing possible interpretations. In parallel and also in contradiction to the situation Isaac was describing, the hearing participants showed their lack of familiarity with sign language. But, simultaneously, they expressed their deep willingness to understand and to make sense of the performance, using their social-cultural itinerary.

After that, Bruna, another deaf participant, complemented the interpretation of Isaac’s speech. However, before she spoke, the coordinator explained that Bruna had also been a student participant in some previous years but now she was a graduated teacher who came back to visit and to participate as much as she could. Table 3 and pictures 7 show her emphatic and emotional engagement with Isaac’s performance and the audience discussion.

Table 3
Bruna`s speech

Glosa / gloss	Translation into Portuguese	Translation into English
BRUNA: BOA TARDE TAMBÉM. AGORA EU VOLTAR ESCOLHER PARTICIPAR DIGITMED ESCOLHER JOVEM PARTICIPAR AQUI VIVER JÁ. AGORA VOLTAR PARA QUE APRESENTAR? SABER POR QUE SURDO TUDO OUVINTE TUDO EMPENHAR EMPENHAR MAS OUVINTE VER SURDO NÃO ATENÇÃO DEIXAR-PRA-LÁ SEMPRE APOIAR. PARECER SURDO SOFRER ME AJUDAR ELE (OUVINTES) NÃO TEM FORÇA P-O-T-Ê-N-C-I-A NÃO TER FORÇA, MAIORIA NÃO TER SOCIEDADE REPRIMIR MAS VERDADE MAIORIA SURDO INTÉRPRETE SABER LIBRAS PROFICIÊNCIA EMPATIA SURDO SOFRER ESCRAVO POR EXEMPLO CHAMAR SURDO, OUVINTE ELE POR EXEMPLO, POR EXEMPLO PROFESSOR OUVINTE SABER EU SOU SURDA ELE VER SABER EMPATIA EU COMO CONVERSAR SABER EMPATIA ME VER PROFUNDO ESCONDIDO TER MAIORIA SURDO TER ESCONDIDO PROBLEMA PARTICULAR GUARDAR TRISTE REPRIMIR NÃO CONSEGUIR EMPENHAR EXEMPLO OUTRO EXPERIÊNCIA AMIG@ SURD@CEGO CRIANÇA SOFRER REPRESSÃO QUALQUER EMPENHAR LIMITAR APUROS TENTAR ME AJUDAR SURD@ AMIG@ TAMBÉM AMIG@ SOFRER COMO VIDA SURDO SURDOCEGO VIVER SOZINHO ME AJUDAR SEMPRE PARTICIPAR PSICÓLOGO MAS FAMÍLIA SABER AJUDAR NÃO SABER PROFUNDO PRECISA LIBRAS PRECISA PAZ PARTICIPAR FOCAR PARTICIPAR CONHECER TODOS CULTURA ATENDIMENTO CONTATO RELACIONAMENTO SURDO ANIMAR CONHECER PRECISA CULTURA TAMBÉM EMPATIA IMPORTANTE MAIS TAMBÉM MAIS AMOR TAMBÉM EU SURDA SOU PROFESSORA EU DESESPERO UM ANO SOFRER DENTRO DESESPERO ME AJUDAR UM OUVINTE ME AJUDAR NÃO SOFRER SACRIFÍCIO ATÉ EU FORMAR CONSEGUIR TAMBÉM UMA OUVINTE AJUDAR ELA SABER EU SURDA PROFUNDA TAMBÉM PARTICIPAR IMPORTANTE CONHECER LIBRAS TAMBÉM CONHECER SOCIEDADE VARIAS IMPORTANTE. SÓ ISSO IMPORTANTE APRESENTAR.	Boa tarde também. Eu escolhi voltar a participar do Digitmed porque foi uma experiência que tive quando jovem. Agora o que vou apresentar? A gente sabe que há lutas dos ouvintes e surdos. A questão é que os ouvintes não dão atenção para os surdos, somente uma simples ajuda. Para que o surdo implora por ajuda, mas sem força para receber. Há um grupo de intérpretes e proficientes que sabe Libras e têm empatia pelo sofrimento do surdo. Por exemplo, o professor ouvinte vê o surdo, mas não sabe o que ele realmente esconde ou sabe. A maioria dos surdos escondem, guardam suas tristezas em seus corações. Essa repressão não permite que lutem. Tenho uma experiência com um amigo surdocego. Ele sempre sofreu desde criança essas repressões e foi deixado de lado tentou lutar contra suas barreiras e nós surdos tentamos ajudar, mas sem saber direito. A vida de um surdocego é solitária e como receber ajuda mesmo indo no psicólogo. A família não sabe profundamente o que se passa e neste ponto a Libras é importantíssimo para conhecer a cultura, conviver para dar um bom atendimento que vai deixar o surdo melhor. Entender a cultura e ter empatia são importantes, também o amor. Eu sofri muito, sou professora agora, mas sofri e implorava ajuda até conseguir me formar. Apenas uma pessoa ouvinte me ajudou porque conseguiu entender minha surdez profunda. Ela aceitou conhecer a libras e outras necessidades da sociedade.	Good afternoon too. I chose to participate in Digitmed again because it was an experience I had as a young girl. Now what am I going to present? We know that there are struggles for listeners and deaf people. The point is that the hearing do not pay attention to the deaf, just a simple help. The deaf begs for help, but without the strength to receive it. There is a group of interpreters and proficient people who know Libras (Brazilian sign language) and have empathy for the suffering of the deaf. For example, the hearing teacher sees the deaf, but does not know what he really hides or knows. Most deaf people hide, keep their sadness in their hearts. This repression does not allow them to fight. I have an experience with a deaf-blind friend. He has always suffered these repressions since he was a child and was left behind, he tried to fight these barriers and we deaf people try to help, but without really knowing how. The life of a deafblind person is lonely and how to receive help even when going to the psychologist? The family does not know deeply what goes on and at this point Libras is very important to get to know the culture, to live together, to give a good service that will make the deaf better. Understanding the deaf culture and empathy is important, also love. I suffered a lot, I am a teacher now, but I suffered and begged for help until I managed to graduate. Only one hearing person helped me because he was able to understand my profound deafness. She agreed to learn Libras and other needs of society.

Pictures 8
Bruna’s performance.

Differently from Isaac’s performance, Bruna’s speech was simultaneously interpreted. Agreeing with Isaac and complementing his ideas, Bruna concedes that both deaf and hearing suffer: We know that there are struggles for listeners and deaf people. Her understanding of how both face struggles; however, does not exempt the hearing from their lack of attention to the deaf: The point is that the hearing do not pay attention to the deaf, just a simple help. Bruna repeats and reinforces what Isaac said in relation to the sadness they feel: Most deaf people hide, keep their sadness in their hearts.

These speeches relating their situations to a feeling of depression and repression were in line with the previous and future performances by some hearing presenters who expressed similar feelings based on other types of oppression they suffered. Before Isaac and Bruna, for instance, a black and transgender student and a female student poetically expressed their sorrow for not being accepted by their families and society. After them, others also expressed similar feelings regarding other forms of oppression and all did so in attempts to have their voices heard.

Poetic language and multimodal means created an environment for the construction and use of interrelated discursive practices in order to signify together. The difference between what the deaf participant said and what people understood shows that there was need for more attempts at finding means to signify together through more resources.

On the other hand, the resources used by the participants to make sense of what Isaac said show that they cared about understanding him. Besides that, the recognition of the deaf people’s difficulties in life by the hearing connected their sorrows and made voicing all their sorrows possible because they created a safe space for sharing.

The attention of the hearing participants to the deaf participants shows their ways to pool their language knowledge to construct something new with the offerings given by the deaf participants. It is possible to visualize in these episodes how strong emotions connected them all during the big group discussion.

The types of tasks and the forms of interactions created provided a safe space for the de-encapsulation of ideas, contents, roles, perspectives, languages spoken, economic background, among others. In the performatic stances where translanguaging was not only done and expected but suggested a claim for decolonizing relationships was initiated.

Concluding Remarks

This article aimed at discussing how can multiple voices in society be heard, valued and empowered in a culturally diverse and inequitable society. The analyses presented the different ways in which translanguaging enabled participants to join the activities and how, through the hospitable quality of translanguaging, their voices were taken into consideration for the construction of meaning and as an attempt to move beyond their initial status. All participants needed to engage their social and cultural itineraries in order to navigate within the poetic and political space of a soiree. They also had to learn how to place themselves in the social scenes they were visiting. In the session, there were so many diversity and life experiences which some people had never had contact with that each and every one was called to go beyond their immediate possibilities to create the “viable unheard of”.

All participants had to access the complexes of indexically ordered and functionally organized resources they had gathered throughout their lives in order to recognize and fight for subjects’ voices they perhaps had never reflected upon. Therefore, it was possible to understand that translanguaging practices, in a de-encapsulated perspective, managed to support a decolonized involvement of the different participants in artistic and educational activities promoted by the project.

In this article, the analytical effort to show a project for de-encapsulating curriculum allowed the presentation of the revolutionary role of translanguaging for decolonizing interactions and creating the involvement of deaf and hearing participants in the interdisciplinary work with poems and social inequalities. The episodes used exemplify ways to develop forms of resistance which enable the concept of translanguaging as a possibility for the “viable unheard of”. That is, when facing limiting and oppressive situations, together, participants may use their multiple resources to create that which has not yet been create but which is doable within the constraints of reality, that which allows for the common and creative to be born.

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• 1
  This research was supported by CNPq and Pipeq.
• 4
  Free translation of : “gobernaba las decisiones y las clasificaciones cognoscitivas, éticas, estéticas, religiosas, económicas y políticas, entre otras”.
• 5
  Over the years the research project has received financial support from the following sources: Marie Curie Foundation, FAPESP, CNPq, PIPEq and PIPAD.
• 6
  The forms of data collection and presentation were authorized by the participants, according to the ethical rules established by the research committee of PUC-SP.
• 7
  The song of exile: My homeland has many palm-trees and the thrush-song fills its air; no bird here can sing as well as the birds sing over there. We have fields more full of flowers and a starrier sky above, we have woods more full of life and a life more full of love. Lonely night-time meditations please me more when I am there; my homeland has many palm-trees and the thrush-song fills its air. Such delights as my land offers Are not found here nor elsewhere; lonely night-time meditations please me more when I am there; My homeland has many palm-trees and the thrush-song fills its air. Don’t allow me, God, to die without getting back to where I belong, without enjoying the delights found only there, without seeing all those palm-trees, hearing thrush-songs fill the air.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  02 Nov 2020
• Date of issue
  2020

History

• Received
  24 May 2020
• Accepted
  21 Aug 2020