Abstract

Excerpts of COUP: Anthology-Manifesto, a radical response to the 2016 impeachment of Brazil’s former president Dilma Rousseff, appeared in English for the first time in Barricade: A Journal of Antifascism and Translation in June 2020. During the editorial process for the English translation, the Covid-19 pandemic hit the United States, revealing in stark relief the reality of income inequality and white supremacy rampant in the country, and late capitalism’s inability – and unwillingness – to properly address it. COUP, in the original Portuguese, was born out of 2016 Brazil’s political reality, and its English counterpart was similarly informed by the conditions that led to its translation. Purportedly antifascist academics must identify and deconstruct fascism in their work and themselves by applying both antifascist theory and practice to their approach. By drawing from the research of theorists such as Gayatri Spivak, Umberto Eco, Freula Fernández, Maria Tymoczko, and Annarita Taronna, supplemented by a personal interview with Brazilian author Ana Rüsche, and incorporating an analysis of contemporary Brazilian and United States politics in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, the present work seeks to examine the immediacy of this deconstruction and how it manifests in the translation and editing process.