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Publikationen » Biographieforschung » Mehrsprachigkeit in der Biographieforschung. Ein Blick über Disziplinengrenzen
Hannes Schweiger
Mehrsprachigkeit in der Biographieforschung. Ein Blick über Disziplinengrenzen
Multilingual subjects confront biographers with particular challenges
ranging from their own linguistic competence to archival gaps and the
question of how to adequately render a life story which is performed
in different languages. To a considerable extent biographies are still
shaped by the conceptual framework of the nation-state. However,
due to globalisation processes which affect the humanities in general
and biography studies in particular, there is an increasing interest
in global or cosmopolitan subjects whose lives exceed national borders
as well as language boundaries. Furthermore, those aspects of
a subject’s life come under scrutiny which mark it as transnational
or transcultural, and biography studies also re-evaluate former life
depictions in which aspects of multilingualism or transnationalisation
had been neglected. The depiction of ‘multilingual lives’ allows for national
borders to be transgressed and contests the tenacious concept
of the nation-state.
Drawing on theories of cosmopolitanism and cultural transfer as well
as taking into account the implications of post-colonial studies for the
writing of biographies, this paper looks at the particular challenges of
writing the life of a multilingual writer, trying to account for the impact
his/her multilingualism has on the writing process. My interest in
this context also applies to unconventional possibilities of presenting
material in multilingual biographies. The transnationalisation of biographies
and biography studies will be discussed by looking at some
examples taken from biography research in the social sciences as well
as in cultural studies: from the biography of Alexander von Humboldt
and the descriptions of Joseph Conrad’s life story right up to migration
biographies written at the beginning of the 21st century.
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