Professor Maya Boutaghou, White Tongue, Brown Skin. The Colonized Woman and Language
On February 10, 2025, the Georgetown Humanities Initiative hosted Professor Maya Boutaghou (Department of French, University of Virginia) on the occasion of the publication of her book White Tongue, Brown Skin. The Colonized Woman and Language.
What does it mean to be an heir, as a woman writer, to colonial and postcolonial cultures in which European language has become so thoroughly ingrained? Prof. Boutaghou’s latest book, White Tongue, Brown Skin, examines the effects of prescribed multilingualism in women writers from India (Toru Dutt), Egypt (Mayy Ziyadah), Algeria (Assia Djebar), and Mauritius (Ananda Devi), shedding light on the essential double nature of the colonial experience.
Prof. Boutaghou shows how violently imposed multilingualism engenders in the mind of the colonized subject a state of permanent self-translation between two or more languages with unequal political and emotional power. They must endure a plural perception of the self, defined by the restless movement of self-translation, which is reflected in a literary dynamic frequently overlooked or misunderstood by previous scholarship.
Prof. Boutaghou discussed the main theoretical, literary, and cultural issues of her books in a panel with Professors Erin Twohig (French and Francophone Studies), Nicole Rizzuto (English), and Nicoletta Pireddu (Georgetown Humanities Initiative), who acted as respondents.