Overview
As our millennium draws to a close, we find ourselves in the midst of great and rapid global changes with nations and political systems dissolving all around us and the world becoming one of shifting identities--of peoples unified and divided by such distinctions as nationality, ethnicity, race, religion, and colonial status. The articulation and construction of these distinctions, the very language of difference, is the subject of An Other Tongue. This collection of essays by a group of distinguished scholars, including Norma Alarcon, Gayatri Spivak, Tzvetan Todorov, and Gerald Vizenor, explores the interconnections between language and identity. The Chicanos, the U.S./Mexico borderland polyglots whose sense of history, nationality, and race is as mixed as their language, are the book's prime example. But the authors recognize that border zones, like diasporas and post-colonial relations, occur globally, and their discussion of hybrid or mestizo identities ranges from the United States to the Caribbean to South Asia to Ireland. Drawing on personal experience, readings of poetry and fiction, and cultural theory, the authors detail the politics of being human through the mediation of language. What does ""shadow"" mean to the Native American Indian, or diaspora to the East Indian immigrant? How does British colonialism yet affect Irish and Indian nationalist literary production? Why is the split between Eastern and Western European language use necessarily schizophrenic? So much of our sense of difference today is constructed as we speak, and An Other Tongue speaks with eloquence to this phenomenon and will be of great interest to those concerned with the discourse of post-colonial studies, critical theory, and the remapping of world literature.Contributors. Norma Alarcon, Alfred Arteaga, Juan Bruce-Novoa, Cordelia Chavez Candelaria, Michael G. Cooke, Edmundo Desnoes, Eugene C. Eoyang, David Lloyd, Lydie Moudileno, Jean-Luc Nancy, Tejaswini Niranjana, Ada Savin, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Michael Smith, Tzvetan Todorov, Luis A. Torres, Gerald Vizenor
Full Product Details
Author: Alfred Arteaga
Publisher: Duke University Press
Imprint: Duke University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.30cm
, Height: 2.40cm
, Length: 23.00cm
Weight: 0.590kg
ISBN: 9780822314622
ISBN 10: 0822314622
Pages: 312
Publication Date: 18 July 1994
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
The essays in this volume are well-written, powerfully argued, and provocative critical introductions to issues such as nation and national languages and heteroglossia and interlingualism. With its focus on multilingualism in the U. S., the Caribbean, India, and Ireland, the volume is essential reading for those interested in the remapping of World Literature. -Jose David Saldivar, University of California, Santa Cruz
"The essays in this volume are well-written, powerfully argued, and provocative critical introductions to issues such as nation and national languages and heteroglossia and interlingualism. With its focus on multilingualism in the U. S., the Caribbean, India, and Ireland, the volume is essential reading for those interested in the remapping of World Literature."—José David Saldívar, University of California, Santa Cruz
Author Information
Alfred Arteaga, Assistant Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of Cantos, a book of poetry.
