Bilingual Games

These essays bring home the most challenging observations of postmodernism—multiple identities, the fragility of meaning, the risks of communication. Sommer asserts that many people normally live—that is, think, feel, create, reason, persuade, laugh—in more than one language. She claims that traditional scholarship (aesthetics; language and philosophy; psychoanalysis, and politics) cannot see or hear more than one language at a time. The goal of these essays is to create a new field: bilingual arts & aesthetics which examine the aesthetic product produced by bilingual diasporic communities. The focus of this volume is the Americas, but examples and theoretical proposals come from Europe as well. In both areas, the issue offers another level of complexity to the migrant and cosmopolitan character of local societies in a global economy.

Sommer invites distinguished writers to examine the fundamental difference it makes to play games between languages.

Doris Sommer is Professor of Latin American Literature at Harvard University, and is author of Foundational Fictions:The National Romances of Latin America and Proceed With Caution, When Engaged by Minority Writing in the Americas.