Translations of memory, identity, and political history in the Brazilian semiosphere: intersemiotic translation, and unpredictability in Ainda estou aqui

Abstract

This paper proposes an analysis of the book Ainda estou aqui, by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, and its homonymous film adaptation, directed by Walter Salles, based on the concepts of intersemiotic translation (Jakobson; Plaza), semiosphere, and unpredictability (Lotman). The book and the film are taken as productions inscribed in spaces of distinct codes, yet in constant dialogue, allowing for the observation of the intermedial and translational mechanisms that emerge from the transit between languages ​​originating from different semiospheres. Intermediality is understood as a productive process capable of promoting cultural reorganizations and generating unpredictable meanings. In this context, intersemiotic translation transcends the notion of mere formal transposition, configuring itself as a gesture of reinvention and symbolic resignification, particularly evident in the passage from literary to cinematic language. The analysis reveals that the film not only adapts the content of the book, but also reinscribes the narrator’s individual trauma within a collective discourse about the Brazilian military dictatorship, expanding subjective and familial memory into the realm of cultural memory. Considering cultural semiotics, this displacement is understood as an internal process within the Brazilian semiosphere, in which unpredictability acts as a creative force in the reorganization of signs and the construction of meaning.