Oldal 30 [30]
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LITERARY CODE-SWITCHING understand the transliterated and relexified Arabic and French items and somehow need to be guided toward their meaning. Ihis can be achieved either explicitly by means of translation and metacommentary in the text, footnotes or a glossary” or implicitly by means of contextualization and cushioning. In this sense, Hammad can be considered an insider who disposes of insider—expertise but remains simultaneously an outsider who knows which knowledge needs to be shared with the outsider reader. Besides, she has the authorial power to decide not to share this knowledge straightforwardly, or even not at all. As an insider, she is at the same time well aware of the fact that because of their linguistic and cultural background knowledge, many of her insider readers will immediately grasp the meaning of the translated and relexified Arabic words and expressions. However, the presence of these items in the text nevertheless will draw these readers’ attention and invite them towards a deeper reflection on the text. Hartman describes this as an aspect of what she calls an “ethnographic pact”, which “creatively manipulates the truth value of literature” and by means of which “authors set themselves up in a position that consciously posits them as both insiders and outsiders in relation to what they are describing.”? The interplay between various languages is one of the means by which this ethnographic pact is established: Mastery of multiple languages and their complexities is deeply intertwined with the insider—outsider position. Language use and in particular the mixing of languages marked as different are not only therefore ways to set up the pact but also a way to challenge and disrupt conventions once this complicity is established. One element therefore that can be read through this is the production of alternative knowledge, the disruption of colonial ethnographies through imitation and challenge at the same time. This in connection to the author’s insider—outsider status allows her to write a text that can creatively challenge colonial knowledge production.“ Some aspects of the ethnographic pact will be elaborated on below. For now, however, I would like to push the ethnographic metaphor a bit further by suggesting that in the most salient code-switches and relexifications, Hammad generates what ethnographers would call “rich points,” namely something the outsider reader does not immediately understand. As Agar’ describes, the rich point, here the unexplained code-switch or relexification, signals a gap between the reader’s world and the one created in the literary text. In the same way as 2 However, in this novel there are no footnotes or glossaries. Hartman: Native Tongue, 60. 4 Ibid. 15 Michael H. Agar: The Professional Stranger. An Informal Introduction to Ethnography, New York, Academic Press, 1996, 31-36. 13 .28 +
