Dislocation linguistique et culturelle dans Yoko Tawada et Akira Mizubayashi

Abstract

This paper sets out to study the representation of heteroglossia in Yoko Tawada’s Überseezungen (2002) and Akira Mizubayashi’s Une langue venue d’ailleurs (2011). We specifically analysed the complex images that show the interaction of global and local forces in Tawada’s Japanese-German and Mizubayashi’s Japanese-French writings. Taking as a starting point their own transcultural "spaces", shaped by multiple connections and allegiances, these two Japanese authors reinvent the multilingual space they inhabit, while giving it a deeply personal meaning, coloured by various cultural currents, which are the result of their own multicultural experience. All this is inextricably connected with a search for a new identity, which is very different in each case. Whereas Tawada maintains her distances from the language and the culture of her new German homeland, Mizubayashi has a tendency to absorb completely the linguistic characteristics of his French hosts, while remaining critical of some of their cultural traits.