Multilingualism, mourning, and (m)other tongues
: women writing exile in transnational autofiction

  • Matilda Nevin

Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis (PhD)

Abstract

In my thesis, Multilingualism, Mourning, and (M)Other Tongues: Women Writing Exile in Transnational Autofiction, I analyse autofictional texts by transnational writers Jessica Au, Nina Bouraoui, Claudia Durastanti, Assia Djebar, Line Papin, Kim Thúy, and Fatima Daas to explore how multilingual interventions allow authors to reckon with the loss of, and emotional distance from, non-dominant languages. Whilst they write predominantly in hegemonic languages, namely French, English, and Italian, these authors also attest to the absence-presence of the voices and languages of others in their texts, such as Vietnamese and Algerian Arabic. I thus extend the definition of multilingual texts to encompass those which gesture towards absence and the loss of language, as well as those which are more overtly multilingual. Drawing on trauma and sound studies, as well as poststructuralist and postcolonial theory, I take a comparative approach to my corpus, arguing that autofiction, as a form which is liminal, lends itself to this exploration of metaphorical and geographical exile and border-crossing. Although these writers celebrate both the creativity and forms of resistance they inherit from their own mothers and female ancestors, a form of resistance which involves listening for the voice and language(s) of the other, their insistence on loss and absence evidences the painful reality of mourning place, people, and language.
Date of Award1 Jul 2025
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • University of St Andrews
SupervisorElise Simone Marie Hugueny-Leger (Supervisor), Jordi Larios (Supervisor) & Emma Frances Bond (Supervisor)

Keywords

  • Multilingualism
  • Transnationalism
  • Autofiction
  • Women's writing
  • Jessica Au
  • Fatima Daas
  • Nina Bouraoui
  • Assia Djebar
  • Line Papin
  • Claudia Durastanti
  • Kim Thúy
  • Feminism
  • Absence
  • Postcolonial theory
  • Sound studies

Access Status

  • Full text embargoed until
  • 25 Jan 2030

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