Queer Multilingualism and Self-Translating the Queer Subject in Klaus Mann’s The Turning Point (1942) and Der Wendepunkt (1952)

Abstract

This paper focuses on the study of queer multilingualism and self-translation and seeks to explore the role of language in the experiences of queer migrants and self-translation as a form of queer expression. Through an analysis of Klaus Mann and his autobiographies The Turning Point (1942) and Der Wendepunkt (1952), the paper will show that in self-translating himself into English and back into German, Mann articulates the multiplicity and instability of his queer self, and reveals the inconsistency and contradictive nature of the categories that dictate identity. This analysis will focus on the differences between the English and German versions – what is translated and what is not, what is added and what is removed – and the multilingualism, the switching between languages, in each text. Both are considered as strategies for destabilizing and multiplying the autobiographical self and expressing its inherent plurality. This paper uses a queer, poststructuralist framework to investigate the strategic unsettling of language as a form of resistance against normative convention and ideology, and builds on recent research in the fields of migration studies, linguistics and translation studies, which stresses the need to queer such scholarship.