Reflections on the 'trans' in Jhumpa Lahiri's In Other Words (In altre parole)

Margaret-Anne Hutton

doi:10.1080/00751634.2023.2261832

Reflections on the 'trans' in Jhumpa Lahiri's In Other Words (In altre parole)

Margaret-Anne Hutton^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

School of Modern Languages

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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Abstract

Jhumpa Lahiri’s translingual text In Other Words (In altre parole, 2015) functions in the article both as a test case to explore disciplinary boundaries and as a case study to examine the ‘trans’ prefix. Firstly, can the infrastructure of Italian Studies accommodate non-Italianist writers and researchers? What sort of conversations might a Transnational Italian Studies scholar have with a comparatist? Secondly, to what extent does Lahiri’s text merit the prefix ‘trans’, especially if we adopt Jessica Berman’s view of the ‘trans’ prefix as disruptive of the normative? An analysis of In Other Words focusing on four trans-prefixed terms – transnational, transgender, transvestite, and translation – reveals a tension between essentialised concepts of national belonging, gender, and language and more performative instances of the same.

Original language	English
Number of pages	13
Journal	Italian Studies
Volume	Latest Articles
Early online date	2 Nov 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2023.2261832
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 2 Nov 2023

Keywords

Lahiri
In Other Words
Trans-mother tongue
Jessica Berman

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10.1080/00751634.2023.2261832Licence: CC BY

Hutton-2023-Reflections-on-the-Trans-ItalianStudies-2261832-CCBY
Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Cite this

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abstract = "Jhumpa Lahiri{\textquoteright}s translingual text In Other Words (In altre parole, 2015) functions in the article both as a test case to explore disciplinary boundaries and as a case study to examine the {\textquoteleft}trans{\textquoteright} prefix. Firstly, can the infrastructure of Italian Studies accommodate non-Italianist writers and researchers? What sort of conversations might a Transnational Italian Studies scholar have with a comparatist? Secondly, to what extent does Lahiri{\textquoteright}s text merit the prefix {\textquoteleft}trans{\textquoteright}, especially if we adopt Jessica Berman{\textquoteright}s view of the {\textquoteleft}trans{\textquoteright} prefix as disruptive of the normative? An analysis of In Other Words focusing on four trans-prefixed terms – transnational, transgender, transvestite, and translation – reveals a tension between essentialised concepts of national belonging, gender, and language and more performative instances of the same.",

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Reflections on the 'trans' in Jhumpa Lahiri's In Other Words (In altre parole)

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Keywords

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