Preface by Mariléa de Almeida

Listening to the Chatter, Silencing Gossip11Editors’ note: The original title of the preface is ‘Escutar o falatório, silenciar a falação’. Falatório is the word employed by Stella do Patrocínio to designate her own speech. We have chosen to translate it as ‘chatter’ (see the Introduction to this volume for more information on this translation). Falação — a word that shares the root of falatório but implies a different engagement with language, suggesting speech that is empty and purposeless — has been translated here as ‘gossip’. In making this choice, we wish to echo the critique of academic discourse as gossip by Trinh T. Minh-Ha in Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), p. 68. According to Trinh, in this kind of discourse, the one perceived as ‘other’ is talked about behind her back rather than listened to.

Stella, this preface materializes an impossibility. Like someone applying electroshocks, everything I tried to write about you seemed like an imposture and sounded invasive. Listening to the audios, I was overwhelmed by your voice.

Because others are already around listening and listening in my place, talking and talking in my place.22Stella do Patrocínio, ‘[Audio recorded by Carla Guagliardi]’, in this volume, p. 85.

Anguished by the missing word and the task given to me, I tried to fill in the gaps. I read theses, articles, and reviews about you, but the sound of your speech kept echoing.

They… those working with phalanx, little phalanx, terminal phalanx. Those working with active, middle, reflexive voice, really reflecting on what they are saying.33Ibid., p. 59.Beginning of page[p. xvi]

Stella, as a Black woman like you, I recognized the suffocating sensation in my body of being spoken about by these reflexive voices. A kind of gossiping that establishes a discursive order even when it evokes good intentions. A superegotistical practice that imposes a syntax; invents the normal and the pathological; creates hierarchies based on skin colour, sex, class, species. Gossip cannot stand what is foreign. Everything needs to be familiar. Gossip produces meanings in order to fix them; it can’t stand displacement.

I was a traveller, well-travelled, travelled a lot, liked to travel, liked trips. I travelled São Paulo, Petró… Rio de Janeiros, Petrópolis, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais… São Paulo, went from… went from… from, how can I say? Mauá Square to São Paulo on foot.44Ibid., p. 41.

In 1962, gossip got in your way. On that day, you and your friend Luiz were walking down Voluntários da Pátria street in Rio de Janeiro. You looked beautiful in sunglasses, a blue dress, black shoes, and a white purse with a little money in it because you were going to jump off at Central do Brasil. As a result of the infamous and violent practice of speaking for others, you spent thirty years in a mental institution.

Stella, they tried to turn you into an object of study. You did not give in. You denounced the investigative delirium of the phalanx:

Let gossip be defeated by your chatter, a signifying machine that doesn’t bow down to the established.

I studied in books, French, languages. ‘Comment allez-vous?’ How are you? ‘Thank you very much’, Vera’s washtub is full of touch. ‘Ça va bien?’ Are you doing well, Mrs? ‘Ha to belder to you, ha to belder to you, ha to belder to you.’66Do Patrocínio, ‘[Audio recorded by Carla Guagliardi]’, pp. 59 and 61. The editors note that the final phrase is probably ‘Happy birthday to you’.

Stella, the texture of your words, the sharp letters, and the penetrating sounds have invaded my body. Before gossip captures my speech, I shut up.

Now that I am silent, I can hear you.