Living Between Tongues. Elements of Evocative Autoethnography in Tawada Yōko's Writings

Autoethnography can be described as an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze (graphy) personal experience (auto) in order to understand cultural experience (ethno)(Ellis, Adams, Bochner 2011). The value of autoethnographic method lies in the possibility, it offers, of having an access to an inner (emotional reactions, feelings and thoughts of a respondent not revealed otherwise) insight into an analyzed problem. Consequently, this methodological paradigm recognizes forms of writing research – amongst which also literary works such as biographies etc. – which are consciously value-centered, where the searching subject is visibly present and her/his voice is of equal importance in forming statements about the social reality. If a literature is to be considered an object of sociological interest, an autoethongraphy, especially its evocative genre, entrusts it with playing a significant part in describing the social world.

              Given the above, in my presentation I would like to discuss elements of evocative autoethnography in literary works of the Japanese writer Tawada Yōko to see how the knowledge, which is acquired from literature, can be applied to an analysis of a social phenomenon, here: a professional career of a migrant writer, who works and lives between two languages: Japanese and German. Tawada Yōko left Japan at the age of 22 and at that time her knowledge of German was limited to grammatical rules. Ever since, she successfully writes and publishes in both languages, experimenting with the borders of language and public discourse. She is associated with the term “exophony”, which may be defined as a voice from the outside resounding in the world of literary culture in a given country. In my presentation I will focus on the social condition of the writer in exile, while questioning the universality of the notion of artistic genius (Elias 1994).