Gretchen Busl

Challenging the monolingual paradigm: Translation as a theme in exophonic literature

This paper examines the trope of translation in exophonic literature, works written in a secondary or adopted language. The persistent presence of translation—simultaneously presented as both possible and impossible—in second-language literature emphasizes the relational, contingent, and material nature of language. Drawing upon a theoretical framework laid by critics such Homi Bhabha, Marjorie Perloff, and Yasemin Yildiz, I demonstrate that contemporary exophonic texts create an interlingual space that challenges the long-standing notion of incommensurability. The trope of translation allows exophonic writers to self-consciously challenge the distinctions between individual languages, to “go on by going through the disjunction of the untranslatable” (Bhabha), to “writ[e] beyond the concept of the mother tongue” (Yildiz). These writers reflect the inherited prejudice of Schleiermacher’s Muttersprache, while at the same time rejecting the nativist myth of language and suggesting that linguistic belonging is as relative as the meaning of a sign itself.

Keywords: exophonic literature, multilingualism, incommensurability

Biography

Gretchen Busl is an Assistant Professor in the English, Speech, and Foreign Languages Department at Texas Woman’s University. She earned a PhD in Literature from the University of Notre Dame and a BA in Romance Languages from Mount Holyoke College. She recently took part in both the Nida School for Translation Studies in Italy and the Institute for World Literature in Hong Kong. Her most recent publications include “Adaptation, Collaboration, and the Critique of Originality in John Barth’s Tidewater Tales,” forthcoming in Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, and “Re-writing the Fiaba: Collective Signification in Italo Calvino’s Il castello dei destini incrociati,” in Modern Language Review, July 2012.