Cultural mediation through translingual narrative

Rita Wilson

Monash University

Translingual writers, in attempting to navigate between languages and the associated social contexts, bring both linguistic and cultural translation into play as processes fostering encounter and transformation. This paper considers the thematic function of translation within recent translingual narrative, where it appears both as a literary topos and as an ideological subtext. It attempts to illustrate how, contrary to postcolonial writers whose narratives self-consciously engage with their own linguistic or cultural hybridity by thematizing the power relationships between different linguistic strands, the narratives of transnational/ translingual writers explore new identities by constructing new dialogic spaces in which language choice is located outside the oppositional model set up by the traditional binaries of postcolonial theorizing. Through a reading of the work of Amara Lakhous, a contemporary Italian writer, born and educated in Algiers and writing in both Arabic and Italian, it is argued that translingual works suggest an understanding of translation as not only something that happens after the story ends, but is a crucial part of the narrative itself; one that generates plot and meaning, and is indispensable to an understanding of the concrete processes of cultural translation that shape relationships, identities, and interactions globally.

Roots are forms of narration, literary and cultural constructs, mediated formations, providing routes through the world. (Chambers 2002) 1.

Introduction

Edwin Gentzlers study of translation and the formation of cultural identities in the Americas points to border writing as a form of writing in which languages are in constant flux [], native language is almost an oxymoron, and translational identity is a given (2008: 165). This paper takes as its point of departure the notion that a translational identity is fundamental to a body of narratives, lately
Target 23:2 (2011), 235250. doi 10.1075/target.23.2.05wil issn 09241884 / e-issn 15699986 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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appearing in great numbers on the European literary scene, written by authors who have been variously described as migrant, diasporic and, more recently, transnational (Seyhan 2001) and who are also variously referred to as multi, hetero-, poly- or translingual writers.1 The concepts of translated identities and cultures have been addressed by numerous well-known theorists in postcolonial literary and cultural studies. Franoise Lionnet, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Niranjana Tejaswini, for example, have all emphasized the necessity for readers and writers to demonstrate linguistic flexibility in order to contend with the polyphonic qualities of texts that construct hybrid identities.2 While the work of these theorists constitutes an important basis for studies on the challenges faced by those who belong to ethnolinguistic minorities and choose to write in a language other than their mother tongue, it needs to be recognized that their research is firmly located within the discourse of postcolonialism, is concerned with the framework through which we perceive relations of power and of alterity, and tends to focus on the relationship of the language(s) to the dominant structures of power. In contrast, the discourse on transnational identities3 highlights the dialectic between the local and the global which produces cultural heterogeneity (Appadurai, 1996) and revolves around notions of hybridity and the translation of cultures through the spatial displacement of people. Of particular interest to this paper is Homi K. Bhabhas identification of the location of cultures in the globalization age at the intersection of the transnational and the translational (1994). The transnational manifests itself in:
specific histories of cultural displacement, whether they are the middle passage of slavery and indenture, the voyage out of the civilizing mission, the fraught accommodation of Third World migration to the West after the Second World War, or the traffic of economic and political refugees within and outside the Third World (1994: 247).

The translational describes the complex process of cultural signification produced under the impact of such displacements, migrations, relocations and diasporas and the unprecedented development of transnational electronic communications and media systems. Although criticized for its lack of specificity,4 Bhabhas concept of cultural translation has formed the basis for much contemporary debate in translation studies since the so-called postcolonial turn in the late 1990s (Bassnett and Trivedi 1999; Tymoczko 2003; Cronin 2006: 72; Batchelor 2009: 250253; Pym 2010: 143148; Simon and St-Pierre 2000; Hermans 2006). Drawing on Derridas notion of dissmination, Bhabha coins the term DissemiNation to tackle the question of nationness as a grand narrative of identity and difference, and of translation as the in-between,

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frontier space where migrant and minority identities are found (1994: 199244). For Bhabha, the power of translation lies in the performative nature of cultural communication (1994: 326), and the focus of attention is on the position of the translator as it intersects with the construction of national identities and the material movement of peoples. To put it differently, Bhabhas notion of translation does not seek to reinforce previously established borders (as commonly represented by the notions of source text/culture and target text/culture), but instead to rethink translation from the border (Mignolo 2000). This leads to a new concept of translation in contemporary theoretical discourse, which assumes a broader definition that goes beyond the interlingual passage and rather encompasses the multiple aspects of transnational and transcultural encounters at the base of our global culture (Bandia 2009: 1). It is in this sense that Bhabhas cultural translation becomes, as Anthony Pym argues, a way of talking about the world (2010: 148). In this regard, even if the ambiguity that characterizes Bhabhas use of cultural translation ultimately downplays the validity of the concept for translation studies, the connection it creates between translation, nationness, and migration apropos of contemporary cultural dynamics, including the production and reception of translingual narratives, should not be overlooked. 2. Locating transnational/translingual narratives Marked by those multiple deterritorializations of language that Deleuze and Guattari find in minor literatures (1986: 19), translingual narratives transform literary and cultural discourse, not only by relocating it on cultural margins, and by foregrounding intercultural dialogue and translation, but also by drawing discrete literary traditions into contact.5 Such narratives doubly manifest that particularly palpable heterogeneity that Itamar Even-Zohar finds in bi- or multilingual societies, manifested within the realm of literature [] in a situation where a community possesses two (or more) literary systems, two literatures, as it were, one of which is typically ignored by scholarship (1990: 12). Contrary to postcolonial writers whose narratives self-consciously engage with their own linguistic mtissage and/or cultural hybridity by explicitly thematizing the power relationships between different linguistic strands, the narratives of transnational/translingual writers explore new identities by constructing new dialogic spaces in which language choice is located outside the oppositional model set up by the traditional binaries of postcolonial theorizing: centre/margin, self/ other, coloniser/colonized. Their position is encapsulated in the works of a contemporary Italian writer, born and raised in Algiers and fluent in Arabic, Berber and French, Amara Lakhous. In his words:

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There is a whole discourse on the politicization of French by Algerian writers themselves and there is a certain use of nationalism that bothers me so I extricate myself from this. For me, French is not even a spoil of war as Kateb Yacine said, that is still the colonial context; it belongs to that generation. I belong to another generation. For me, French is a language like any other. Thanks to French I discovered Flaubert, who is, for me, one of the most important writers. It is a language like other languages. In my case, I prefer Italian to French, for aesthetic and creative reasons, and also to extricate myself from this postcolonial discourse (cited in Esposito 2011: 4)

While not necessarily an entirely new form of cultural response to (neo)colonial pressures, the predominant response of writers like Lakhous to specific texts, styles, and motifs of metropolitan literatures is through parody, pastiche, irony, mimicry and similar literary techniques. In my opinion, Amara Lakhous is exemplary of a new generation of translingual writers in whose work the thematization of cultural translation conceptualized as a process of intercultural encounter that reshapes thoughts by translating them between cultures serves as a vehicle for disrupting the truth value of the dominant national discourse. Written in both Italian and Arabic, his work lays emphasis on the concept of language as both home and simultaneously a translated space; what Iain Chambers calls a site of transit and difference suggesting that a diverse sense of identity might begin to be acknowledged here. Land and locality ones roots, as it were are not canceled; rather, they are reworked in the translating medium of language (2002: 29). 3. From roots to routes Lakhous first novel was written in Arabic and published in Algiers in 1999. It was also published in Italy in the same year in a bilingual edition, Le cimici e il pirata (Bedbugs and the Pirate). This is a double text in more than one sense: not only does it straddle two worlds and two quite distant cultures, but it also concretely represents the notion of the double text that can be fully decoded only by the bilingual reader conversant in both cultures and traditions, and whose reading can therefore be none but a perpetual translation. (Mehrez 1998: 122124). In effect, this bilingual edition constructs a privileged space where double linguistic and cultural palimpsests create an intricate relational model between two worlds. The double palimpsest horizontally from language to language and vertically from oral tales to text destabilizes meaning and deterritorializes both source and target language, while simultaneously reterritorializing them through the mirroring effect of a bilingual edition. This is a process akin to what Ioanna Chatzidimitriou

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has described as a minorization process in which the host body undergoes a dehistoricization of sorts, rendering [] the palimpsest of its potentialities visible, and allowing its signifying pluralities to take shape and subsequently assign form to novel historical associations (2009: 2324). The original Arabic version of Cimici begins at what for an Italian reader would be the back of the book. Both the Italian version, translated by Francesco Leggio, and the Arabic version end in the middle of the book. Thus the space of the translingual writers in-betweenness materializes in Cimici, not only as the obvious division separating the two texts, but most importantly, as a process of displacement both vertically (from oral story-telling to text) and horizontally (Arabic to Italian). The meeting in the middle of the two texts is a useful metaphoric construct to bear in mind when considering the mediation at work in Amara Lakhous second novel. Also originally written in Arabic, it was released in 2003 in Algeria with the title Kayfa tardau min al-dhiba dna an taadaka (How to be suckled by the she-wolf without getting bitten). The novel was later re-written in Italian and re-titled Scontro di civilt per un ascensore a Piazza Vittorio (Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio). Lakhous emphasises the fact that the Italian version is not simply a translation but an act of re-writing that transcends the limitations of linguistic precision while validating linguistic choices that mimic the voices of the characters:
Prima scrivo il mio testo in arabo. Poi dico che lo riscrivo in italiano, perch non si tratta di una semplice auto-traduzione, non essendo obbligato a rispettare il testo originale, lo ricreo a mio piacimento. In tal senso godo di una libert che il traduttore normalmente non ha. [] Cerco di usare il napoletano, il milanese a seconda del linguaggio che usano i diversi personaggi. (Lakhous 2005: n.p.) First I write my text in Arabic. Then I say that I re-write it in Italian, because it is not simply a case of self-translation; as I am not obliged to respect the original text, I re-create it as I wish. In that sense, I enjoy more freedom than a translator normally has. [] I try to use Neapolitan, or Milanese according to how the different characters would use language. (Lakhous 2005, my translation)

Further, by inscribing within written Italian the trace of oral Arabic, Lakhous creates a double palimpsest: not only, as he says, does he Arabize Italian and Italianize Arabic (2009: 137), he also arguably performs an intermodal translation (oral into written). In the case of transnational narratives, such as this one, that relate to a culturally and linguistically heterogeneous minority group, the very affirmation of diversity burdens the creative voice with the additional task of social and cultural interpretation, of mediating not only between different spaces but also between different histories. In other words, in a situation in which cultural and linguistic homogeneity cannot be assumed, the characters, the author and the readers do

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not necessarily belong either to the same geographical areas as illustrated, for example, by the different dialects or historical moment, as exemplified by different migrant (hi)stories. The very language in which the novel is written, while it is seemingly the national language, nevertheless calls for translation because its idiom includes the legacies of many other idioms.6 The plot of Scontro di civilt per un ascensore a Piazza Vittorio is shaped around a single apartment building on Piazza Vittorio in the Esquilino suburb of Rome. The buildings residents, whose stories interweave, offer a microcosm of the intercultural reality of contemporary Rome as they battle over the deteriorating condition of their elevator. It is the catalyst for daily clashes between the tenants: an out-and-out war that brings to the fore the inability to relate to the other: be the other a foreigner, like Johan Van Marten, a Dutch film student who wants to revive 1950s Neorealism by making a movie (titled, naturally, Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio) or a native Italian, like Antonio Marini, a Milanese who has moved to Rome to take up an academic post at La Sapienza University, thinks southern Italians are all criminals, and believes the unification of Italy was an irreparable historical mistake (2008: 76). In short, Scontro can be said to epitomize a narrative space in which language and identity conflicts become textualized (Milln-Varela 2004: 52). A distinctive feature of such narratives is the conscious effort to transmit a linguistic and cultural heritage that is articulated through acts of personal and collective memory. In this way, writers become chroniclers of the displaced whose stories will otherwise go unrecorded (Seyhan 2001: 12) and their narratives perform the essential function of giving a voice to paranational communities (Seyhan 2001: 10). As Armando Gnisci (2007) notes, they have already undertaken il salto triplo (the triple jump), going beyond multi- and interculturalism and providing a new model of reciprocal education that can be defined as transcultural. Lakhous offers just such a transcultural outlook on the Italian way of life by representing a mixed and decentred subjectivity that is always in dialogue with cultural otherness. 4. Whose truth is it anyway? The constant shifts between the perspectives of the multiethnic cast of characters generate a plurality of independent and unmerged voices and consciousnesses, a genuine polyphony of fully valid voices (Bakhtin 1984: 6), each of which expresses a different opinion on the recent event that has thrown the neighbourhood into disarray: the discovery of the body of Lorenzo Manfredini, a thug nicknamed The Gladiator, in the buildings elevator. One of the residents, Amedeo, who has apparently disappeared, becomes the chief murder suspect. The police question every-

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one who knows him, and each character gets a chapter to relate the truth as he or she knows it (or wants it known), in the form of a deposition to the police. By allowing the individual voices to take the floor, Lakhous offers new perspectives and reveals new social dynamics with a marked emphasis on the conflictual side of these interactions. The complexity at the base of urban social relations is further entangled by the need to negotiate the uncertain articulations of racial, class and gender differences between both the natives and the migrants as well as between the different ethnicities of the migrants. As the testimonials unfold, the uncertainty about Amedeos true identity increases, with the discussion centring around his real name. Although in Rome everyone calls him Amedeo, this is as a result of an initial error on the part of the local barista, Sandro, who mishears the Arabic pronunciation and inadvertently changes it to an Italian name:
quando Sandro mi ha chiesto il mio nome gli ho risposto Ahmed. Ma lui lha pronunciato senza la lettera H perch non si usa molto nella lingua italiana, e alla fine mi ha chiamato Amede, che un nome italiano che si pu abbreviare con Amed. (2006: 139) when Sandro asked me my name I answered, Ahmed. But he pronounced it without the letter h, because h isnt used much in Italian, and in the end he called me Amede which is an Italian name and can be shortened to Amed. (2008: 99)

On the level of the narrative, this slip-up characterizes Sandros monolingual worldview. The same slip-up, however, also functions on the level of meta-narrative as a strategic communication aimed directly at the reader: a linguistic error that bears the real truth value within Lakhous economy of meaning. The manipulation of the cognate Ahmed/Amedeo exemplifies Lakhous narrative strategy: from here on, the tale that unfolds is one of slight shifts, of double entendres, in which appearances of familiarity are misleading. While such moments of play are interspersed throughout the novel, often it is not simply language, but actual, material survival that is at stake: these verbal exchanges are power plays as much as they are wordplays. The representation of linguistic negotiations (i.e., translation and mistranslation) between the mix of cultures represented by the characters becomes an internal literary strategy, deployed first in order to expose the mechanisms of power, and then to subvert them. Sandros error draws attention to a writing process that Michaela Wolf describes as
the authorial unmasking of anothers speech through a language that is doubleaccented and double-styled [] through this hybrid construction [] one voice is able to unmask the other within a single discourse. It is at this point that authoritative discourse becomes undone (2000: 133).

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The thematic potential of the hybrid construction is exploited by Lakhous throughout the novel to make a point not only about the instability of language itself, but more particularly about the relationship between names and national identities. Not only can language come to mean something other than what the speaker intends, but cognates and shared roots can cross the delineating boundaries of language and national identity, thereby destabilizing the distinction between self and other. The error caused by the homophony of the two names coincides with a self-translation that has been taking place all along, and results in a fortuitous double identity: the re-naming allows the protagonist to construct an Italian life, perfectly integrated thanks to his excellent grasp of the Italian language and his generous nature, that enable him to become a positive role model and point of reference for all the residents in the condominium and the neighbourhood. In this context, translation operates inside the narrative both in the traditional, pragmatic sense (in terms of the conversion of language) and in a derivative, metaphorical sense, as the narrative symbolically converts the contested structures of power through strategic, intentional moments of linguistic or communicative slippage. In the latter case, translation is less a distinct operation and more a habitus,7 in which the breathing space between two languages, or between the message intended by the speaker and the message received by the listener, becomes a space of latent resistance. To make sense of the narrative, readers must fill in the gaps by knowing what Sandro does not. In some cases, this knowledge is linguistic, in other cases it requires familiarity with Italian or Arabic cultural discourses and symbolic resonances, as with Mehrezs notion of the double text, and as embodied in the double name Ahmed/Amedeo. Representing the doubleness of selfhood, the protagonists split identity can be said to correspond to a translation conflict: between the memory of his lost original language and the curative potential of his adopted language (cf. Lakhous 2009). Ahmed/Amedeo, a man in transit, in translation, is the central component required to solve the murder mystery and at the same time is the indispensable mediator: at the narrative level he mediates the clash of cultures between the various characters, as well as their disparate views on the truth; at the metnarrative level, he mediates for the reader by providing a more balanced view of events as they unfold through his diary entries which alternate with the testimonials of all the other characters. 5. The fiction of the translator Ahmed/Amedeo, as the powerful embodiment of living in translation, does not abandon his native identity, rather he goes beyond the identities, carrying the responsibility of articulating the signifying bridge between contexts and [becom-

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ing] author of a fragmented translation that is both linguistic and cultural (Parati, 2005: 122). Through the character of Ahmed/Amedeo, Lakhous places a special emphasis on translation as an essential component of an efficient intercultural process and of a plural identity, both in the individual and in the collective domain. Lakous fictional translator occupies a central role in connecting two worlds, in trying to build a dialogue to create an equal interchange between cultures. As well as being the cultural mediator par excellence, Ahmed/Amedeo is also a professional translator and interpreter, working at the Supreme Court in Algiers as a translator from French into Arabic before migrating to Italy (2006: 164; 2008: 115). The choice of a translator as the main character a feature of several contemporary novels focusing on conflicting intercultural interactions 8 intriguingly emphasises the complex implications of translating ones self from one culture to another. In this case, his task is not only to mediate between languages and cultures but also to act as the locus (or meeting place) of internalised dispositions and societal norms a figure who is emblematic of the world today: someone who occupies the liminal space in between cultures, who operates from a position of plurality and who carries out a role that is charged with immense responsibility. (Bassnett 1999: 213):
Tanta gente considera il proprio lavoro come una punizione quotidiana. Io, invece, amo il mio lavoro di traduttore. La traduzione un viaggio per mare da una riva allaltra. Qualche volta mi considero un contrabbandiere: attraverso le frontiere della lingua con un bottino di parole, idee, immagini e metafore. (2006: 155). So many people consider their work a daily punishment. Whereas I love my work as a translator. Translation is a journey over a sea from one shore to the other. Sometimes I think of myself as a smuggler: I cross the frontiers of language with my booty of words, ideas, images, and metaphors. (2008: 109).

One insight that clearly emerges from even a superficial reading of Scontro is that the second language serves as a new mode of comprehending the environment; one that usually acquires psychological connotations other than those associated with the first language or mother tongue. 6. From the mother tongue to the linguistic mother9 The mother tongue, a concept that exists in many languages, is commonly perceived as a positive symbol of cultural pride, as a means of maintaining practical and emotional contact with the homeland. The relationship between identity and the mother tongue is extremely strong, since identity and self-concept develop over a long period, usually relying on the surrounding language. In a way, the new

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language functions as new pliable material waiting to be used, free from conventions, rigid connotations, and emotional barriers. Language as the instrument used to reformulate the cultural heritage and transmit it to succeeding generations is thematized throughout Scontro. Most notably, the centrality of language in the construction of identity is manifested in Ahmed/Amedeos representation of his adopted language as a primary form of nourishment:
Sono come un neonato, ho bisogno del latte tutti i giorni. Litaliano il mio latte quotidiano. [] Mi allatto della lupa insieme ai due orfanelli Romolo e Remo. Adoro la lupa, non posso fare a meno del suo latte. (2006: 155; 168) Im like a newborn. I need milk every day. Italian is my daily milk. [] I suckle on the wolf with the two orphans Romulus and Remus. I adore the wolf, I cant do without her milk. (2008: 109; 118)

The moment of transmission of the language and the basic knowledge required to survive is depicted as a symbolic suckling:
Ormai conosco Roma come vi fossi nato e non lavessi mai lasciata. Ho il diritto di chiedermi: sono un bastardo come i gemelli Romolo e Remo oppure sono un figlio adottivo? La domanda fondamentale : come farmi allattare dalla lupa senza che mi morda? (2006: 142) By now I know Rome as if I had been born here and never left. I have the right to wonder: am I a bastard like the twins Romulus and Remus, or an adopted son? The basic question is: how to be suckled by the [she-]wolf without being bitten? (2008: 101)

What distinguishes Ahmed/Amedeo from the other translingual characters in the book is precisely his relationship with the host language Italian, considered his nuova dimora (2006: 157; new dwelling place, 2008: 110). The intertextual reference to noted translingual writer, Emil Cioran, Romanian-born but French by adoption, Non abitiamo un paese ma una lingua (2006: 157); We inhabit not a country but a language (2008: 110) invites readers to consider the manifold nuances of what it means to live in different languages. The connotation of dwelling in a new language reminds us once again of the translational process undergone by the migrant. We are also reminded that such a process offers the possibility of an interlinguistic mediation, of imagining, learning, understanding and performing other languages. A task akin to the kind of dialogue that, according to Walter Benjamin, expresses the reciprocal relationship between languages, instigates a transformation and a renewal of something living and particularly a transformation of the language of the translator (1969: 723). It follows that the function of translingual literature is not primarily a pragmatic, but an aesthetic and an ethical

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one. Its aim is more symbolic than realistic: it symbolizes the variety, the contact and the crossing of cultures and languages. Hence, at the centre of Lakhous plot is the complex task of revealing ones own cultural world to people from different cultural contexts. The difficulties of mediating between cultures are represented by dramatizing the contact between languages, as, for example, in the Italian lessons Stefania gives to Bengali women (2006: 156157) or the interaction between the Milanese academic and the Dutch student (2006: 109110). The translative nature of the translingual experience is also evident in the self-conscious processes of intralingual and interlingual translation (Jakobson 2004) that dominate the narrative space: seen in the occasional humorous anecdote of linguistic incompetence. A characteristic example, which also highlights the polylingual nature of text, is that of Benedetta Esposito, the Neapolitan concierge who is convinced that Parviz, a political refugee from Iran, is a rude Albanian scoundrel who responds to her greeting with
male parole nella sua lingua. Non mi ricordo quella parola che dice sempre, forse mersa o mersis! Insomma, limportante che questa parola vuole dire cazzo in albanese e si usa per insultare la gente (2006: 48) a nasty word in his language. I dont remember exactly the word he always says, maybe mersa or mersis! Anyway, the point is, this word means shit in Albanian and is used as an insult (2008: 11)

In works like Scontro di civilt per un ascensore a piazza Vittorio translation is an integral component of the narrative code, generating plot and meaning. This suggests an understanding of (a theory of) translation in which it is not equivalence, but the necessary lack thereof, that reveals and delivers the actual truth value of the statement. These are texts in which nearly any statement may have a double meaning; an inside joke between author and reader, delivered at the characters expense (as in the Benedetta example). In the thematic representation of communicative breakdown, we see language recognizing its own inevitable fiction, acknowledging how tenuous is the absolute link between symbol and referent, how easily it is obstructed. In this, and doubtless many other translingual texts, translation works inside the narrative to negotiate between different languages and cultures, between author and reader, and even between the conflicting layers of affiliation and identity that the author brings to the text. 7.

Migrations, translations, rewriting

In his new home, Lakhous fictional translator becomes a cultural mediator whose activities are inscribed in cultural overlappings which imply difference

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(Wolf 2000: 142). The transcultural interaction that results from these activities permits us to view so-called in-between spaces as translational spaces: spaces where relationships, identities, and interactions are shaped through concrete processes of cultural translation. A translational view of an intercultural situation makes visible those all too easily forgotten elements inherent in any intercultural communication: understanding, mediating, misunderstanding, resistance etc. it makes complexity more transparent and thus easier to handle because we can deconstruct it into component parts. Lakhous writing, written in Italian but located between domains, between forms, between homes, and between languages (Said 1994: 332333), is out of place with respect to the literary canon. It is in this sense that it contributes to the decentring of the historical narrative of Italian metropolitan centres, which is being disrupted by people shifting among multiple locations and whose diasporic sensibilities refashion prior definitions of national canons, notions of citizenship and political representations. Migration to and from Europe is not a new phenomenon, but translingual narratives explore the metaphoric dimension of migration as a form of double imagination and critical awareness where borders are a fictional dimension of the mind upon which to construct new forms of belonging. As Lakhous perceptively writes: It appears literature knows no frontiers. With it, we build bridges; through it, civilizations and peoples meet. (2009: 137) In this context, translingual narratives have the same crucial role to play as the one that Michael Cronin identifies for translation in the era of globalization, that is, to bring foreign elements, extraneous ideas, fresh images into cultures without which the kick start of otherness remains stalled in an eternity of mediocrity (2004: 94). The wonder of this conceptual alterity can both give pleasure if we use our affective imaginations to empathize (translate ourselves into the situationality of the other) and stimulate learning if we use our intellect to figure out the fresh metaphors. It is, among other things, this possibility of renewal that fuels David Helds vision of a cultural cosmopolitanism that has at its core the ability to stand outside a singular location (the location of ones birth, land, upbringing, conversion) and to mediate traditions (2002: 58). Lakhous has stated that choosing to write in Italian is not primarily a pragmatic choice, but an aesthetic and an ethical one. Writing in the new language thus becomes an act of affirmation, as translingual narrators position themselves as active participants in the destination culture. The emergent voices of these writers challenge the narratives of the past, claiming or disclaiming difference in their own terms. When these voices are shown, examined, teased out by an interdisciplinary approach which makes use of transnational/translational approaches, then they can be new sites in which to contest homogeneity. By comparing and interpreting translingual writing, especially those narratives which carry the in-

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fluence of an oral tradition, a new methodology can be introduced into literary critique which can enhance and foster an intercultural dialogue. Further, reading transnational narratives can lead to greater cultural self-knowledge. By entering into contact with and seeking to understand the network of connections between the events, the things and the people of the world (Calvino 1988: 105) that marks these stories, we become for a time transcultural too as we adapt our own conceptual systems and follow the shifting viewpoints from which the complexities of acts of migration turn into the complexities of constructing cultural identities.

Notes
1. See, for example, Kellman (2003), Meylaerts (2006), Hokenson and Munson (2007). Following Kellman, I use the term translingual to refer to writers who write in more than one language or in a language other than their primary one and who, by flaunt[ing] their freedom from the constraints of the culture into which they happen to be born (Kellman 2003: ix), are able tocross over into new linguistic identities. 2. Lionnet (1995) has shown that postcolonial identities are necessarily mtisses in order to braid the multiple aspects that constitute them. Mtissage, as a multi-voiced practice, enables writers to privilege the differences that living in multiple languages afford them and to shape hybrid identities. Tejaswini has labeled postcolonial people as people living in translation (1992: 36). Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has established the impossibility for the translator to translate from a position of monolinguist superiority (2000: 410). This impossibility demonstrates the necessity for linguistic diversity and flexibility in order to engage in the most intimate act of reading that translation constitutes (2000: 409). 3. The emergence of transnationalism as a category of cultural analysis became evident in the mid1990s, in contexts that brought together social sciences and literary and cultural studies under the impact of the communication revolution and in close relation with the immense interest in globalization as a new kind of phenomenon that has already started to radically change our world. While political science is concerned mainly with the effects of the transnational on international relations and the nationstate, the chief focus of sociology is on the making of transnational identities across international borders and the way in which they act upon the mechanisms of social relations. The humanities, in their turn, stress the idea of border and use the term transnational in a much broader sense to signal the fluidity with which ideas, objects, capital, and people now move across borders and boundaries. (Basch, Glick Schiller and Szanton Blanc, 1994: 27). See also Appadurai Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for Transnational Anthropology (1996: 4865). 4. To mention two of the most recent examples in translation studies where a critique of Bhabhas approach to translation is made, Batchelor (2009: 246) reflects on Bhabhas tendency to assert an overall meaning to the notion of cultural translation by inserting it repeatedly into the discussion without ever providing a clear definition, whereas Pym (2010: 145) criticizes Bhabhas lack of reference to translation theories prior to Walter Benjamins The Task of the

248 Rita Wilson Translator. See also the Forum on Cultural Translation in Translation Studies (July 2009, 2: 2, pp. 196219 and Jan 2010, 3:1, pp. 94110). 5. While Deleuze and Guattari attribute the revolutionary value of minor literatures to a kind of collective authorship or enunciation, they also suggest that they have the capacity to reinvigorate a reified literary language, making it vibrate with a new intensity through deterritorialization (1986: 17, 18, 22). 6. Many studies have described how the novel has historically allowed people to imagine the special community that is the nation. In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson pointed to the correspondence between the interior time of the novel and the exterior time of the readers everyday life, which gives a hypnotic confirmation of the solidity of a single community, embracing characters, author and readers, moving onward through calendrical time. (1991: 27). Transnational narratives challenge the notion of a single/same community embracing characters, author and readers. 7. As Moira Inghilleri notes, it is through the habitus embodied dispositions acquired through individuals social and biological trajectories and continually shaped and negotiated vis--vis fields that social agents establish and consolidate their positions in social space (2008: 280). 8. To mention just a few written in English: Leila Aboulela, The Translator (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999); John Crowley, The Translator (New York: William Morrow, 2002); Ward Just, The Translator (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1991); John Le Carr, The Mission Song (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2006). See also Wilson (2007). 9. To borrow an expression from another transnational/translingual writer, Yoko Tawada (2006)

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Authors address
Rita Wilson School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics Monash University Clayton Campus Victoria 3800 Australia rita.wilson@monash.edu