Chris Writing in the Foreign:Self-Translation and Translingualism in the Works of Manuel
Puig Christopher LarkoshUniversity of Connecticut/University of Massachusetts-
Amherstlarko@rocketmail.com
Extended abstract: Is there such a thing as a literary style of transnational migration? How might one go
about discussing it? Even before setting off of this exploration, there is something that warns me of thinking
of translingual writing as anything close to a single style, as each moment in such a literary passage seems
to propose numerous styles, as well as different approaches to the demands of genre and literary identity
and the testing of their limits. If migration and multilingualism can guide an understanding of style, it can do
so only in the most transitory of senses, its meaning always both multiple and mobile, familiar and
foreign. This presentation explores the concepts of self-translation and translingualism in the writings of the
Argentine author Manuel Puig (1932-1990). Although Puig is best known for his novel The Kiss of the Spider
Woman and the cinematic and stage adaptations of it, less critical attention has been given to his other
works written in exile in New York, Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City in the 1970's and 80's, perhaps precisely
because of the stylistic techniques of self-translation and translingualism employed in their creation. An
renewed examination of these works--a collection of essays entitled Estertores de una decada: nueva York
'78, the novels Maldicion eterna de quien lea estas paginas and Cae la noche tropical, the screenplay
Recuerdo de Tijuana--thus allows for a discussion not only of multilingual identity, but of other complexities
of national and gender identity cen tral to his literary production. Puig wrote these works outside of his
native Argentina in an exile which, while self-imposed was no less necessary to ensure his safety and the
continued publication of his works; he made the decision to remain abroad not only because of the
censorship of his earlier novels but because of his openness regarding his own homosexuality and because of
his vocal opposiiton to the return of Peronism and the authoritarian military governments which followed it
from 1976 to 1983. A reading of these works, then, makes it difficult to imagine any one of these reasons--
political, sexual or literary--existing spearately from the others, as his work continues to be read as an
interrogation of the oppressive institutional mechanisms which have long attempted to impose through
violence and rigid form of officialized national and sexual identity not only in Argentina but many other
countries subjected to similar regimes. His translingual style is thus not only a break from&n bsp;the norms
of monolingualism but from the normative politico-sexual space called the nation, one which begins long
before his departure and crossing of any officially patrolled border. Puig'g translingual migration thus makes
possible not only a discussion of homosexuality but also one of heterosexuality from a perspective which
implicitly limits its powers of representation and any claims to normativitity. Such an exploration calls into
question whether it is possible to imagine heterosexuality not as a central, totalizing and standardized social
norm bordered by clearly defined perversions and pathologies, but as a vaguely bordered sexual field in
which a number of other cultural forces (e.g., race, class, culture and languages) intervene in the making of
cultural subjects. A reading of Puig's lesser-explored texts reaffirms the extent to which the borders of
identity are continually on the move, a mobility all the more visible in those political, cultural, linguaistic and
sexual spaces conventionally considered to be the heartland; indeed, the border of any identity is as migrant
as the migrant itself. Bio: Christopher Larkosh is presently an Assistant Professor in Residence of Latin
American literature and culture at the University of Connecticut, as well as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at
the Translation Center of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He received his doctorate in
Comparative Literature from the University of California at Berkeley in 1996, and over the past ten years he
has taught, presented and published a number of papers on translation and multilingual writing in Europe,
the U.S., Canada and Latin America. He is currently working on a book on multilingualism and masculinity in
20-century Latin America.