New names, translational subjectivities : (dis)location and (re)naming in NoViolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names

摘要

NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names – shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and winnerof the Etisalat Prize for Literature in 2013 – is a novel in which the leitmotif of (re)namingassociates the trope of migration to the (dis)location and translation of subjectivities. Basedon the premise that the movement of subjects from one social context to another isanalogous to the translation of text from one language to another, this paper proposes atransitional mode of subjectification. However, I argue against reading Darling’s journeyfrom Zimbabwean shanty dweller to illegal immigrant in America as a linear progressionfrom an original (located) to a translated (dislocated) subjectivity. I further argue that thenovel goes beyond the idea of ‘transparent translation’ – a visible layering of a translatedsubjectivity over a discrete original subjectivity – by privileging their inter-permeability.Semantic and cognitive dissonance are read as textual markers of the psychic (dis)locationexperienced by displaced subjects. This analysis of Darling’s childhood and adolescentsubjectivities leads me to conclude that the novel’s leitmotif of (re)naming as a call for anew hermeneutic code through which translational subjectivities can be understood.