A LINGUAGEM, O ENCOBRIMENTO DO OUTRO E A ÉTICA DA LIBERTAÇÃO EM SINÔNIMOS DE NADAV LAPID

Abstract

The article examines Nadav Lapid’s Synonyms (2019) through the lens of the Tower of Babel myth and Enrique Dussel’s decolonial theory, while also drawing on reflections by Jacques Derrida and Walter Mignolo. The study highlights how language operates simultaneously as tyranny and as a possibility for liberation in contexts of migration and diaspora, situating the subject as a permanent foreigner. The narrative of Yoav, a young Israeli who attempts to become French by renouncing his own language and identity, is read as an allegory of the center/periphery hierarchies and the processes of “concealment of the Other” that underpin Eurocentric modernity. The article argues that the film, by addressing incomunicability and babelization, reveals the symbolic and material violence inscribed in language and exclusionary practices. At the same time, it emphasizes the potential of art and language as spaces of resistance, debabelization, and the creation of new forms of belonging. Thus, Synonyms is interpreted as a metaphor of Dussel’s concepts of the ethics of liberation and transmodernity, which affirm difference and envision a critical horizon beyond colonial logics.