Autofiction and Translingualism in Contemporary Germanophone Writing

Autorentext

Danya Harvey is a writer, translator, researcher and performer based in Berlin. They completed their PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Glasgow in 2024, and have an MA in Translation from the University of Bristol and a BA in Modern Languages (French and German) from the University of Oxford. They engage critically and post-critically with linguistically and sexually diverse, gender-deviant textualities in their poems, scripts, and autotheory. Their latest academic publications include: an essay on poetic translation and Kerstin Hensel in Kerstin Hensel: Literary Correspondences (2025) published by Brill; an essay on translational ethics and affects in the work of Katja Petrowskaja in Tracing German Visions of Eastern Europe in the 20th Century, volume 15 of the Edinburgh German Yearbook (2022) published by Boydell & Brewer.

Klappentext

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.

Inhalt

Translator's note; bruise; 1. Translation's queer prisms: the nonbinary logic of untranslatables, translator embodiment and translingual visibility; 2. 'Dann hüpfe ich auch, komisch und ungeschickt, wie eine Nadel auf einer abgespielten Platte...': translational ethics and affects in Katja Petrowskaja's Vielleicht Esther (2014); 3. 'Solange ich schreibe, spreche ich zwar nicht, aber ich schweige auch nicht': the queer author's in/visibility, translingual un/translatability, and creative, therapeutic Umwege in Kim de l'Horizon's Blutbuch (2022); 4. 'Zwischen den Schleifen': the open totality of transfiction, prismatic mothering & the paradox of decolonising translation in Sharon Dodua Otoo's Adas Raum (2021); 5. Coda: Open again &or Just translation