Dos Sertões para as Fronteiras e das Fronteiras para os Sertões: as (in)visibilidades das identidades performativas nas práticas translíngues, transculturais e decoloniais no ensinoaprendizagem de Língua Portuguesa Adicional da UNILA

Abstract

Hearing the voices of the South in order to socially include the subjects that perform them and also making these subjects aware of the oppressive world where they live in are both ways to free and transform them as human beings, making their identities visible. This Doctoral Dissertation developed its theme from the idea that has just been exposed, seeking for analysis and reflections about how to empower the considered marginalized subjects in a fluid, fragmented and deterritorialized world. The Portuguese as an Additional Language classroom at the Federal University of Latin-American Integration (UNILA), located in the city of Foz do Iguaçu, Paraná, Brazil, in the Triple Border with Paraguay and Argentina, was the chosen scenario to put into practice the liberating and transforming praxis which make us hear those unheard voices. Taking into account the language policies in Brazil as well as those implemented and practiced at UNILA, this research aims at verifying, through translingual (CANAGARAJAH, 2013; GARCÍA & WEI, 2014), transcultural (SANTIAGO, AKKARI & MARQUES, 2013; GUILHERME & DIETZ, 2014; SOUZA, 2017) and decolonial (MIGNOLO, 2013) practices, how the subjects´ performative identities (BUTLER, 1990, 1997; PINTO, 2007, 2013) can be (in)visible. These subjects are the Portuguese as an Additional Language foreign students from different levels, such as, Basic, Intermediate I and Intermediate II and me, the Brazilian professor-educator-researcher, who are embedded in the transborder context at UNILA. Considering this research as a Research-Action-Participant with an interpretative basis, and also, the epistemological deconstruction, decolonization and disobedience proposed by Transgressive Applied Linguistics (PENNYCOOK, 2006), these local language practices (PENNYCOOK, 2010) were enacted through oral presentations about the declared War to Paraguay and the declared war to Guarani people, and also through learning-reflexive portfolios produced by the students as final papers for the Portuguese as an Additional Language class at UNILA. Through these oral and written texts produced by the students and also by me, as the Brazilian professoreducator, this research brings forth the urgent need to reflect upon the roles of the Additional Languages and the Common Cycle of Studies at UNILA. This academic work also aims at reflecting about the concepts of bilingualism and interculturality which are intertwined at the daily routine and in the activities developed at the university, but are not well comprehended yet. This research concluded that the tasks applied in the context of the Portuguese as an Additional Language classroom, through translingual, transcultural and decolonial practices, could rearrange, ressignify, and make the subjects´ performative identities visible. This could open possibilities for them to move through a multiplicity of third spaces and third shores, collaborating actively in different nets which are built by transnational territories. These subjects expressed themselves by releasing their buried voices through performances that could make their identities visible, in the search of the “solidarity of the existences” (FREIRE, 2013).