Theatrical Translations: Postmemory and Politics in Daniel Alarcón’s At Night We Walk in Circles

Abstract

This article examines Daniel Alarcón’s 2013 novel At Night We Walk in Circles and analyzes how artists engage with political crisis and its continued traumatic effects long after the crisis (in this particular case: the internal conflict in Peru) has ended. Taking Marianne Hirsch’s concept of “postmemory” as a point of departure, the study focuses on the relationship between past trauma and its legacy in the present, arguing, that such negotiations between past and present may be understood through the lens of translation. Here, translation is seen as pointing to the ways in which art created in response to one context is continually reimagined and recreated –that is, translated– in order to circulate in new contexts. Alarcón’s novel particularly positions theater as a translative force, one that elucidates the relationship between trauma, postmemory, and mourning.