Abstract
This book explores the historical literary landscapes of multilingual cities and illustrates how language unlocks analysis of the socio-political spaces within the city. Simon offers the reader a socio-historical overview of the mechanisms of translation and hybridisation with an extensive presentation of literary works. Simon’s work investigates a city’s signature blend of dialects and accents where language is a currency of exchange and plays a role in defining territories and identities.
This book convincingly applies a productive methodological approach that could be followed within many disciplines including urban sociology, urban geography, urban economics and city planning. Simon has an effective way of telling a story that will interest many disciplines, and never force-feeds the reader with the complex web of thematic inquiry that is skillfully woven throughout this text.
Simon focuses on the practices of translators—including authors, poets and artists—acting as agents of a process that carries ideas and new forms of dialogue. The author reminds us that translations are rarely neutral events in a placid field of encounter, rather they are events which sustain or transform social and literary interrelations (p. 3).
In what she calls dual-language cities, “choosing to write in one language or the other dictates which social or linguistic references will be excluded” (p. 93).
It would be impossible in this short review to mention all literary works discussed in this book, but I would like to stress how well they are used to illustrate and support arguments about language use and translation and their relationship to the spatialities of the city. Literary works are used to situate language within the city, provide historical context, describe the socio-political climate and illustrate related characteristics of the built environment. Simon draws out additional themes from literary works including the relationship of language to class, power and sexuality.
In chapter 1, attention is given to methodology and the reasons for her particular approach to studying the city. Simon suggests that language is taken for granted by authors of key urban works, such as David Harvey, Saskia Sassen, Edward Soja, Alan Blum, Richard Sennett and Iain Chambers where “there is little sustained discussion of language and language interactions as a feature of a city’s identity” (p. 7).
Through her review of literary landscapes, Simon chose urban environments with more than one historically-rooted language community. She investigates the language relations of English and Bengali in Calcutta with a focus on literary works from 1800 to 1880, between German and Italian in Trieste with works from 1850 to 1918, Spanish and Catalan in Barcelona between 1975 and 2000, and English and French in Montreal from 1940 to 2000. These ‘dual cities’ house a special character which lies in the presence of two linguistic communities that demonstrate a sense of entitlement to the same territory with each language supported by institutions of similar authority (p. 3). She has chosen translators who best illustrate the dynamics at play in each city—such as Italo Svevo in Trieste and James Long in Calcutta.
In chapter 2, the author uses the Bengali Renaissance in Calcutta and the production of historical literature to illustrate the role of translators and language. This investigation of the location (and dislocation) of literary works remains multidisciplined as she supports her arguments with an exploration of the imprint of colonial encounter. Drawing from post-colonial theory and the work of Dipesh Chakrabarty (2000), she problematises the Eurocentric translations during this period and provides additional examples of using “translation as a foundational category of critique” (p. 53) leading to the conclusion that translation alters the original in such a way as to produce difference rather than equivalence.
Simon then moves from colonial Calcutta to the domain of empire in Habsburg Trieste in chapter 3, where she finds three great cultural identities at play: German, Italian and Slav. With a focus on the legacies of the Spanish Civil War and Francoism, she discusses how language dynamics influence citizenship and shape class and identity conflicts. The tensions between imperial and national tongues through the Germanisation of language policy in the city reveals a relational linguistic order: the official, the vernacular and the spaces of domestic life, which form a linguistic overlay.
In chapter 4, Simon suggests yet another spatial configuration of the dual city, one which is best represented neither by territorial divides (as in the colonial city) nor by a horizontal overlay (as in the Habsburg city), but where language use in Barcelona occurs through “subterranean routes” (p. 91) located within the city. Barcelona “is a space of overlapping and doubled realities, where languages impinge on one another” (p. 93). This linguistic space is illustrative of the specificities of each dual city chosen by the author. Barcelona and Montreal are both dual cities yet Montreal, unlike Barcelona, is a divided space which has fostered autonomous practices and institutions for each dominant language. Montreal is characterised by spaces of linguistic ownership brought about by the “instability of language relations” (p. 118). These conclusions are brought about through her investigation presented in chapter 5 of over 60 years of Montreal’s cultural history and an uncovering of the links between three separate movements of modernity which emerged in the 1940s.
Although the book draws extensively from public history, it remains unclear how ‘memory’ is theorised by the author. Yet another thematic oversimplification is the author’s use of the concept of ‘third space’ which she defines as “the urban zones and forms of expression which cut across and destabilize the old divisions” (p. 119) “and alter the traditional duality of the city” (p. 121). Examples include such spaces as the Raval, in Barcelona, and the traditional immigrant zones of Montreal. Both of these concepts require further elaboration to present clearly the methodological perspective chosen for this book.
This book convincingly presents the idea of using language as a lens to view the city. Although this approach is discussed, a more direct explication of its merits would benefit the reader who may not be convinced at the onset that this work belongs within their library. This book fills a void, as few urban researchers consider the importance of language when investigating questions of diversity and accommodation, identity and community.