Heteroglossic Masculinities: Multilingualism in Armée du salut and Princesa

Abstract

The article examines the literary representation of masculinities in the context of border crossings in the Mediterranean area and specifically the relationship between multilingualism and gender identity. The discussion is based on comparative closereadings of two auto-fictional novels which embody border crossings in the form of migration, globalization and (de)colonization: L'armée du salut (2006) by Abdellah Taïa and Princesa (1994) by Fernanda Farias de Albuquerque. The article argues that the novels' representations of multilingualism and complex gender identities can be fruitfully understood in terms of Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia, and that both gender and linguistic practices shift as they are recontextualized socially and geographically.

Introduction

“…In addition to the recurring emphasis on translingual practice, many of the present contributions discuss the notions of border and border crossings. Notions such as journey, home, and belonging associated with border crossings could imply and foreground a neat movement from one place to another, and potentially contribute to the cultural appropriation of the experiences of the migrant (Skalle & Gjesdal, 2018). The contributions in this volume rather show how complex these crossings might be, and how transnational identities seem to often be unstable and fluid, as they develop and change in the intersectional encounter between categories such as gender, sexuality, class, and race.…”

“…The chapters in this anthology focus on translingual practice, and show how language use in multilingual contexts might be adopted to express and examine notions such as identity, gender and sexuality, subjectivity, and belonging. In this perspective, translingual practice may function as a device for the representation of complex concepts related to the migrant experience such as the aforementioned notions of gender, identity, and belonging (see also Skalle & Gjesdal, 2018), thus contributing to the overall discursive representation of migration and exile.…”