“Nowhere mother tongue”: Sylvia Molloy and the (Latin American) living between languages

Abstract

In Vivir entre lenguas, Sylvia Molloy (2016) composes a series of autobiographical scenes marked by her relationship with the languages ​​of her Argentinian family environment (Spanish, English and French), which was later resignified in her writings and literary research, and further developed in strongly internationalized academic arenas. This paper proposes to read this territorial and linguistic trajectory  through a broader lens: the constitutive linguistic alterity of Latin America. In this sense, we highlight both the glotopolitical contextual conditions underlying the way in which the author claims to relate to her languages, as well as the territorializing dynamics of the “shibboleth”, a figure used by Molloy in her essay/narrative to represent the political and linguistic constraints that usually accompany migration and border processes. Finally, the article analyzes how, through the translinguistic experience, essay writing allows to write and think about one's life.