Language, Multilingualism and Translating Afropean Identity: The Cases of Igiaba Scego and Fatou Diome

Dr Christopher Hogarth: Language, Multilingualism and Translating Afropean Identity: The Cases of Igiaba Scego and Fatou Diome

This presentation focuses on the issue of the language of the Afropean female writer. It focuses on the techniques used to engage in life writing multilingually in Italophone writer Igiaba Scego’s first work and beyond, and in the literary corpus of Francophone Afropean writer Fatou Diome, most specifically in her 2013 work Impossible de grandir. Whereas Scego’s first publishing opportunity came as a result of an Italian fascination with multilingualism following the Italophone collaborations of writers from outside Italy and Italian editors, Diome uses the liberty afforded to her as a well-known writer as a platform to develop a translingual practice that incorporates other languages into her later work, while problematizing the linguistic philosophies of her predecessors. However, Scego has become more renowned in the Anglophone world of late due to her exploitation of a particular culture of translating postcolonial work, one which Diome has been less adept at penetrating.