Yoko Tawada Voices from Everywhere

by Slaymaker, Douglas; Arens, Hiltrud; Banoun, Bernard; Brandt, Bettina; Knott, Suzuko Mousel; Kraenzle, Christina; Mitsutani, Margaret; Perloff, Marjorie; Suga, Keijiro; Tachibana, Reiko; Yildiz, Yasemin

• ISBN13: 9780739122730
• ISBN10: 0739122738
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-10-03
• Publisher: Lexington Books

Summary

Yoko Tawada: Voices from Everywhere is the first English-language volume of criticism dedicated to the work of Yoko Tawada, one of the most highly acclaimed writers of her generation. Tawada has garnered numerous accolades and prizes-such as the Akutagawa Prize for literature (Japan) and the Goethe medal (Germany)-and was featured in a presidential panel at the 2006 Modern Language Association (MLA Conference, organized by MLA president Marjorie Perloff, who has contributed a foreword to this volume: The chapters explore the plurality of voices and cultures in Tawada's work and push on to explicate the poetics and intellectual underpinnings of her writing. Analyses of her fiction are paired with examinations of their philosophic and aesthetic foundations. The contributors represent a wide range of scholars and translators who are intimate with Tawada's work in German, in Japanese, and/or in English. Many of the essays begin as close readings of the German and Japanese texts. Yoko Tawada: Voices from Everywhere is an essential collection for anyone with an interest in this important young writer. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Doug Slaymaker is associate professor of Japanese at the University of Kentucky

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. vii
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction: Yoko Tawada: Voices from Everywhere	p. 1
Tawada Yoko Does Not Exist	p. 13
Translation, Exophony, Omniphony	p. 21
Missing Heels, Missing Texts, Wounds in the Alphabet	p. 35
Writing in the Ravine of Language	p. 45
Das kurze Leuchten unter dem Tor oder auf dem Weg zur getraumten Sprache: Poetological Reflections in Works by Yoko Tawada	p. 59
Tawada's Multilingual Moves: Toward a Transnational Imaginary	p. 77
Traveling Without Moving: Physical and Linguistic Mobility in Yoko Tawada's Uberseezungen	p. 91
The Unknown Character: Traces of the Surreal in Yoko Tawada's Writings	p. 111
Words and Roots: The Loss of the Familiar in the Works of Yoko Tawada	p. 125
Sign Language: Reading Culture and Identity in Tawada Yoko's "The Gotthard Railway"	p. 137
Tawada Yoko's Quest for Exophony: Japan and Germany	p. 153
Index	p. 169
About the Contributors	p. 173
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