THE BURDEN OF IDENTITY. TRANS-LINGUAL AUTHORS NGUGI WA THIONG?O, JUAN RODOLFO WILCOCK AND JOSEPH CONRAD

DORFMAN, DANIELA

Lingua & Literatura

Universidade Regional Integrada do Alto Uruguai e das Missões (URI)

Lugar: Rio Grande do Sul; Año: 2020 vol. 22 p. 77 - 88

At a time when globalization questions the legitimacy of organizing literary traditions based onnational categories, the decision by some authors to write in a second language gains importanceas an expression of uneasy subjectivities. By virtue of their translingualism they evade theimposition of a national identity built on a linguistic basis.This paper focuses on the cases ofNgugi wa Thiong?o [1938] ? Kenyan writer who forsakes English and turns to his nativeGîkûyû?, Juan Rodolfo Wilcock [1919-1978] ?an Argentine writer who abandons Spanish andgoes to Italy to write in Italian? and Joseph Conrad [1857-1924]? a Polish writer who employsEnglish to write about Africa. It analyzes the transactions these shifts entail and the presence oftraces of an underlying language so as to view these author?s works as ―contact zones‖ wheredifferent cultures overlap and coexist