Beschreibung:
<jats:p>In this paper I would like to explore the work of five bilingual writers focusing on the different narratives they develop in their use of (self-)translation as a textual strategy to fashion a sexual persona. Julia(e)n Green’s <jats:italic>Le langage et son double/The Language and its Shadow</jats:italic> and Louis Wolfson’s <jats:italic>Le Schizo et les langues</jats:italic> create narratives of severance and disjointing. The self-translational activity is used here to create perfectly separated spheres of (sexual) identity. Raymond Federman’s <jats:italic>A Voice within a Voice</jats:italic> and Christine Brooke-Rose’s <jats:italic>Between, </jats:italic>on the other hand, develop narratives of merging and mixing. The self-translating activity is viewed as a constant shifting and moving of sexual roles taking place in a sphere outside the conscious control of the writer. The final part of the paper will be dedicated to a discussion of Abdelkebir Khatibi’s <jats:italic>Amour bilingue</jats:italic> that fictionalizes the functioning of bilingualism and self-translation in terms of sexual roles, introducing, this way, a post-colonial dimension missing in the other texts.</jats:p>