INTERSEMIOTIC TRANSLATION, MEMORY, AND SUBJECTIVITY IN THE IMAGETIC REPRESENTATION OF THE ARGENTINE DICTATORSHIP: THE CINEMATIC ADAPTATION OF LA CASA DE LOS CONEJOS, BY LAURA ALCOBA, DIRECTED BY VALERIA SELINGER
Keywords:
Adaptation, Comparative Analysis, Autofiction, Censorship, Cinema, Argentine Dictatorship, Latin American Dictatorships, Cultural Studies, Literature, Mourning, Memory, Autobiographical Narratives, Remembrance, Historical Representation, Trauma, Intersemiotic TranslationAbstract
This article examines the relationship between intersemiotic translation, memory, and autofiction, adopting the notion of adaptation as “repetition with variation” (Hutcheon) and understanding, following Ricoeur, that memory translates lived experience into new signs. It also engages with Beatriz Sarlo’s critique of the “subjective turn,” which values individual experience in the construction of historical knowledge. In this context, La casa de los conejos (Alcoba, 2008) and its cinematic adaptation (Selinger, 2021) are approached as processes of intersemiotic translation, in which the passage from literary narrative to audiovisual language entails an expressive reconfiguration of testimony. The book articulates remembrance, fiction, and testimony to reconstruct childhood under the Argentine dictatorship, while the film directly dramatizes these events, transforming memorial material into staged action. Thus, both works, through distinct paths, translate and reinscribe traumatic experiences in the public sphere, renewing historical representations and proposing, even if indirectly, a critical reflection on the demands for justice and the search for the disappeared that persist in the post-dictatorship period to the present day.
