Transparentes. Semasiology of the phototextual silences of Colombian exile

Abstract

The aim of this article is to scrutinize, unravel, and problematize the hidden, symbolic, and emotional meaning that is woven and condensed behind the lexical and semantic silences present in some of the photo-texts in Transparentes. Historias del exilio colombiano by Javier de Isusi (2020). This literary, graphic, and testimonial work – awarded the 2021 Euskadi Prize for Literature – brings together, articulates, and reinterprets the testimonies of protagonists belonging to diverse ethnicities, cultures, generations, and social groups, unified by the shared experience of forced displacement, loss, and the search for identity reconstruction resulting from the prolonged Colombian armed conflict. Collected by the Truth Commission team in the many countries where these people sought refuge, rebuilt ties, and redefined their memories, the voices and lives of these testimonies intersect, dialogue, and converge in hybrid photo-texts, loaded with narrative density, visual power, and symbolic depth, where images and words complement each other, are stretched and mutually rewritten. However, amid this expressive abundance, the disturbing presence of silences emerges, intentional pauses that reveal as much as they conceal. Hence the need to interpret and highlight the latent semasiology and emotional charge that lies behind the absence of the spoken word. These lexical and rhetorical omissions, far from representing simple discursive gaps, constitute spaces of resistance, areas of refuge, and strategies for protecting against trauma, allowing the author to construct a universe of meaning that is prudent, respectful, and ethically committed. Through this expressive restraint, De Isusi offers a symbolic and emotional refuge to the protagonists, without detracting from their profound need to narrate their pain, to give shape to their loss, and to reinscribe their experience in the collective memory of exile.