An Other tongue : nation and ethnicity in the linguistic borderlands /

The introduction and 14 essays collected here address "the erasure of minorities from [the] majority's conceptual space" and "internal colonization": the processes through which ruling cultures coerce minorities into accepting a language, a conceptual structure, and ultimately a subjectivity that was once alien to them. Language, bilingualism, biculturalism, hybridity, and "mestizaje" are all addressed here, through concepts such as Derrida's ever-elusive "diff'erence" and Bakhtin's "heteroglossia," as well as through readings of specific literary traditions. D. Lloyd's refashioning of earlier work on the texts of colonized and struggling Ireland is superb, and there are other very good pieces (T. Niranjana on the politics of translation; Arteaga's own essay on the meanings of "Other" in this context; G. Vizenor's overstated but intriguing investigation of the preoccupation with language in Native American texts; Gayatri C. Spivak, as interviewed by the editor). The most widely shared weakness is the theoretical and empirical neglect of the state and generalizations that are too confidently based on the evidence offered by intellectuals-artists. Recommended for large undergraduate collections and essential for research libraries. K. T"ol"olyan; Wesleyan University