YOKO TAWADA AND READING THE STRANGE(R): ‘VON DER MUTTERSPRACHE ZUR SPRACHMUTTER’ AND ‘DAS FREMDE AUS DER DOSE’

Yoko Tawada, who writes in both German and Japanese, often uses images of reading to help her explore what she designates as exophony, that is, a condition of living, speaking, and writing outside one's mother tongue. The more closely Tawada's characters read German, however, the less they are able to feel at home in it. Her narratives often portray ‘Japanese’ narrators in German settings who struggle to make sense of a system of visual symbols that conjure up sound images, which in turn are interpreted for meaning. The narrators are accustomed to a system consisting of visual images already imbued with meaning. Tawada's attention to language underlies her exploration of foreignness. She recasts alienation as a stimulant to new ways of thinking about gender, otherness, and belonging. This article shows how two narratives, ‘Von der Muttersprache zur Sprachmutter’ and ‘Das Fremde aus der Dose’, link illiteracy and marginality with the alphabet and gender. It addresses how Tawada's texts contribute to discussions about the mother tongue and systems of writing. It then analyses the texts noted above as key examples of Tawada's ‘foreignising’ manner of reading that pierces cultural conventions and animates language. This manner of reading also isolates its practitioners.