ABSTRACT
One of the books that most marked my adolescence was Cien años de soledad. I loved reading the stories of the Buendías and finding them so similar to the stories I used to hear from my neighbours in a small town in Brazil. Many years later, I heard a lot about “magic realism” in the midst of another reality. I was in Germany “learning” about Latin America. Since those days, an epistemological question has been bothering me: can a European really understand Cien anõs de soledad? Perhaps Cótazar and his Parisian flair, but can he or she understand Macondo? This question guides this essay: what are the limits of translation and the limits of language, and what are the implications of these limits in the process of decolonisation brought to the centre of contemporary academic reflections, to the arena of Enlightenment that is the university? Are we capable of the construction of texts and the creation of discourses from the centre of the Enlightenment, that allow the translation, interpretation, and understanding of non-enlightenment epistemologies? The essay intends to follow this sting from the dialogue with contemporary authors that I frame within the decolonial perspective, either by their own adscription or by the place from where they speak and their relevance in the contemporary epistemological debate.
