Mobility, space and subjectivity
Subtitle: Yoko Tawada and German-language transnational literature.
Published: 2004
Language: eng
Number of pages: 278
Description: This study introduces Japanese-German author Yoko Tawada, employing theories of mobility as a framework through which to read her German-language literature. Mobility appears in Tawada's writings in numerous forms: migration, colonial expansion, tourism and leisure travel, daily transportation, and the virtual movement of information along telecommunications highways. I argue that Tawada's work provides readers with alternative frameworks for thinking about displacement which challenge the models of mobility and identity that underpin much reception of German-language transnational literature. My initial chapter examines major trends in this reception, illustrating how most studies focus on the debilitating effects of dislocation and how writers not easily identified with economic migration or diasporic communities are neglected. Chapter 2 discusses Tawada's interest in the roles that landscapes, home, foreign territories and even tourist sites might play in the production of identities or, conversely, how subjects contribute to the social construction of spaces they inhabit. Chapter 3 discusses how Tawada's Talisman critiques notions about the ethnographic value of transnational writing. Rather than offering information about Japanese-German identity, these autobiographical essays turn the ethnographic gaze on German culture, resisting ethnographic designs readers may have on the text. I also consider how Tawada's reversal of the usual terms of ethnographic writing results in an interrogation of concepts of Heimat. Chapter 4 considers constellations of geography, language and travel in Uberseezungen, where Tawada questions the stakes for the contemporary traveling subject, as acts of travel become more uniform. I argue that Tawada locates the possibility for shifting modes of subjectivity not in geographic, but in linguistic dislocation. In Chapters 2 to 4, I also maintain that Tawada is not unique in her thematic preoccupations. I examine works by Biondi, Chiellino, Sideri, Ozdamar, Zaimoglu and Senocak to determine how they engage in questions of mobility, showing how the theoretical questions raised by Tawada's work can be applied to transnational literature generally. In conclusion, I contend that expanding hitherto narrowly defined categories of migrant, exile, or diasporic literature to incorporate more diverse investigations of the interconnectedness of place, identity and language offers one way to realise the potential of non-territorial literary paradigms.
Notes: Adviser: John Noyes.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2004.

Electronic version licensed for access by U. of T. users.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 65-05, Section: A, page: 1799.