JHUMPA LAHIRI’S NARRATIVES OF SELF-TRANSLATION AS DYNAMIC ENCOUNTERS WITH THE OTHER

Abstract

This essay deals with how translational processes may be incorporated in narratives concerned with the relational modes in which hybrid subjectivities may come into being. In altre parole, Jhumpa Lahiri’s autobiographical work which addresses the author’s relationship to Italian as a foreign language, as well as her choice of Italian as the language of her most recent literary production, is analysed as a text which does not only represent, but also stages the processes through which a second language is learnt and contributes in redefining the self-perception of the speaker. Although Lahiri describes her fiction as an apparently intimate space of isolation and exile, in this essay I argue that it is overdetermined by an awareness of the transpersonal, relational nature of subjectivity, as well as by the desire to explore languages as sites of both exile and reconnection. Also, by showing that language is, itself, a place of alterity, she challenges notions of selfhood and otherness, and engages with interlinguistic and intercultural communication as forms of mutual understanding and respect.