Contemporary Bilingual/Exophonic Writers and Their Politics

Abstract

This chapter discusses “bilingual” literature and literary criticism on it, surging since the 1980s in Japan, which finally brought to the fore the notion of “mother-tongue.” While the surge may partially be in response to the rising global interest in literature beyond the national and linguistic boundaries, I try to demonstrate that such consciousness in Japan was evoked partially by the dissemination of the theory of transformational grammar. Further, the works of representative “bilingual” literati such as Tawada Yoko, Hideo Levy, Mizumura Minae, et al. are analyzed. Their access to the Chomskyan theory of a “native speaker” will be documented. In spite of their “exophonic” (outside the mother-tongue) problem consciousness, however, it will be pointed out that they have occasionally recuperated the linguistic (and hence national) boundaries and restored “language” as an ideological apparatus of a nation-state. I conclude the chapter by referring to more promising cases such as some works by Tawada Yoko, which present rich osmosis of varying linguistic paradigms, although her “exophonic” theory itself highlights and even essentializes the linguistic boundaries.