Using the term ›créolisation‹ borrowed from linguistics, Édouard Glissant describes his crosscult... more Using the term ›créolisation‹ borrowed from linguistics, Édouard Glissant describes his crosscultural reflections which bear witness to the insight that dichotomous thinking can no longer do justice to the problems our contemporary societies are facing today. To Glissant, the growing worldwide relations are analogous to the linguistic phenomenon of créolisation and the Creole languages. When different cultures meet in the Antilles, a »matière inédite« (Glissant 1997a: 25) of the Creole language and culture emerges, something new and unpredictable emerges from the global relations between peoples and cultures. When reading the texts of the Japanese writer Yoko Tawada, exactly this impression of the new and unpredictable in the language is created. Behind her very special use of the German language lies a strategy of poetic emancipation and liberation of the language, which the ludic interaction between Japanese and Germans entails. Against the background of Édouard Glissant's reflections and the texts of Yoko Tawada used as an example, this essay will show how writers and authors enrich language and literature on the basis of their own experiences with shifts, changes of perspective, and how they approach a particular idea of world literature or ›littérature-monde‹.
Using the term ›créolisation‹ borrowed from linguistics, Édouard Glissant describes his crosscult... more Using the term ›créolisation‹ borrowed from linguistics, Édouard Glissant describes his crosscultural reflections which bear witness to the insight that dichotomous thinking can no longer do justice to the problems our contemporary societies are facing today. To Glissant, the growing worldwide relations are analogous to the linguistic phenomenon of créolisation and the Creole languages. When different cultures meet in the Antilles, a »matière inédite« (Glissant 1997a: 25) of the Creole language and culture emerges, something new and unpredictable emerges from the global relations between peoples and cultures. When reading the texts of the Japanese writer Yoko Tawada, exactly this impression of the new and unpredictable in the language is created. Behind her very special use of the German language lies a strategy of poetic emancipation and liberation of the language, which the ludic interaction between Japanese and Germans entails. Against the background of Édouard Glissant's reflections and the texts of Yoko Tawada used as an example, this essay will show how writers and authors enrich language and literature on the basis of their own experiences with shifts, changes of perspective, and how they approach a particular idea of world literature or ›littérature-monde‹.
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