The poison in the cake: A fragmented writing about truths, lies, and silences

Abstract

In this essay, the two co-authors engage in a conversation about violence, an object escaping and defying language. Francesca is an anthropologist employing notes of psychotherapy sessions as ethnographic material; Arinas is a writer gradually gathering narrative fragments to find the truth in her family history. The essay begins with the circumstances of their encounter and follows their narrative process, intertwining pieces of ethnography, journaling, and fiction. In the exchange with the ethnographer, the writer makes, remakes, and unmakes her truth firstly through self-translation, then through a multilingual conversation, and finally through fictional writing. The two writing practices mingle, becoming fragmented and polyvocal, and offering the possibility of inventing, and not just making sense of, experiences. Thus, truth appears as a multidimensional, paradoxical object: intimacy appears in violence, violence in affection, and poison in a piece of cake. The combination of languages, genres, and voices explodes a story into a bigger, shattered picture of fragments, thus opening up a possibility, as well as a risk, of transformation—of imagining a new world.