Autofiction and Translingualism in Contemporary Germanophone Writing

Offering a self-consciously queer survey of contemporary German life writing, Autofiction and Translingualism in Contemporary Germanophone Writing: Transidentifications aims to contextualise the emergent genres of autofiction (the creative writing of one’s own life) and translingualism with bodies (life writing beyond one's native language) within ethical discourse, recognising them as examples of ‘writing for life’. In the light of paradigm-shifting theories of prismatic translation and black trans feminism, whilst concerned with the tactics of autotextuality and the ambitions of untranslatability, author Danya Harvey assesses the fertile intersection of autofiction and translingualism, considering works at this junction to be a burgeoning form of translation for life. Functioning as a decolonial space of (re)embodiment, affective testimony and trans-identification, translingual autofiction offers paths beyond the modern/colonial logic of binaries and hierarchies ingrained in paranoid translation orthodoxy.

This monograph explores ethical future translational practices outside of equivalence-based interlingual transfer and its monolingual assumption by shifting the focus of translation study to literary translingual experimentation, where trans-textualities produce glitches within hegemonic (cis/mono)-lingual contexts.