Unmooring Literary Multilingualism Studies

What is it about?

This article questions dominant ideas about what "multilingualism" is, which are common in both literary publishing, and in literary studies. It suggests that we should look at alternate ways of understanding multilingualism, such as those which come out of the experience of people who become refugees, whose experience of displacement produces complex language repertoires and ways of thinking about language. Reflecting on this, it looks at the work of the Palestinian-British poet and scholar Yousif M. Qasmiyeh, born in Baddawi camp in Lebanon. Qasmiyeh's poetry, which is in what he calls a "third language" poised between English and Arabic, offers a way of understanding what it means to understand multilingualism that begins from the space of the refugee camp.

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Photo by Calvin Ma on Unsplash

Photo by Calvin Ma on Unsplash